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2:00PM Water Cooler 9/23/2020

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

Alert reader dk (not to be confused with DK) is in the process of developing the following interactive chart:

And here is (are) the latest poll(s) as of 9/23/2019, 4:00 PM UTC/12:00PM EDT:

Biden still sagging, Sanders hacks away at Warren’s small lead. (If you squint your eyes so the big sample shares dominate, the trends are visible: Biden’s slow deflation, Sanders’ consistency, and Warren’s rise to parity with Sanders. You will also note that the narrative that there are only two top contenders (Silver; Cillizza) arose after the last large sampling on September 7. Since then, volatility has been great, but sample sizes small. And the polling detail:

I think dk has started a really neat project, and in the near future we’ll seek your feedback (within reason) for the tool “live.”

UPDATE 2019-08-30: Now the polls aggregated (all available) are shown at the bottom of the poll. We also give more detail about each poll than RCP, and allow candidates to be selected or deselected. That’s three reasons what dk is doing beats RCP, and if we can make the individual polls selectable/highlightable, that will be four reasons. With more to come, grid willing.

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2020

* * *

Biden (D)(1): I’m not sure the Ukraine sequel is going to be as good as the Russia original. I guess we’ll have to see:

Also, isn’t the current President of Ukraine supposed to be a good guy, at least by Ukrainian standards? (So I can’t help but wonder what The Blob thinks of all this.)

Booker (D)(1): “Cory Booker’s 2020 bid, still sluggish in SC, has campaign manager questioning path forward” [Post and Courier]. “In a memo to staff and supporters Saturday, Booker’s campaign manager said that if they don’t raise $1.7 million in the next 10 days, he does not see a “legitimate path forward” in the race… Booker’s aides and supporters readily admit that his candidacy has not caught on to the level they expected at this stage in the race. While many of his campaign events in the state draw sizable crowds, most polls of the state’s Democratic primary voters have placed Booker in the low single digits. Part of the struggle has been about overcoming voter perceptions of electability, with many saying they view Biden as the “safe choice” to accomplish their overriding goal: beating Trump.”

Sanders (D)(1): “Bernie Sanders Calls for Eliminating Americans’ Medical Debt” [New York Times]. “In a plan released Saturday, Mr. Sanders, the Vermont senator and presidential candidate, proposes wiping out an estimated $81 billion in existing debt and changing rules around debt collection and bankruptcy. He also calls for replacing the giant credit reporting agencies with a “public credit registry” that would ignore medical debt when calculating credit scores.” • Nuking the horrid social credit credit reporting agencies is just as big a story as writing off the debt.

Sanders (D)(2):

Other campaigns in 3, 2, 1….

Warren (D)(1): More on that super-sketchy WFP endorsement. The quote is from Maurice Mitchell, national director of the WFP:

First, if the superdelegates from the Board voted one way, and the membership another, that’s not a “false wedge.” It’s a real wedge and a wedge, moreover, that mirrors real splits in the Democrat Party. Second, if you’re concerned about superdelegates determining the Democrat nominee on a second ballot, then legitimizing superdelegates at the WFP is a great way to ease you into the idea that it’s good, actually.

Warren (D)(2): “Warren to headline major DNC fundraiser’ [Politico]. “Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will headline a big-ticket fundraising event for the Democratic National Committee in October… The pair will star at the DNC’s Women’s Leadership Forum conference, taking place in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 16 and 17. The event, which has been held each year since 1993, will focus on the 2020 election. Past headliners have included former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama…. In addition to Warren and Pelosi, the Women’s Leadership Forum event will feature more than a dozen lawmakers, including freshman Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Lauren Underwood of Illinois and other Democrats, including Kentucky Senate candidate Amy McGrath and former Obama White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.” • Spanberger: CIA Democrat. Underwood: “Underwood said that health care is “‘a human right’ and that single-payer/universal coverage/Medicare for all was ‘a great goal’ but would have to wait until we have good answers to the questions about costs.” McGrath: “Trump promised to bring back jobs. He promised to lower drug prices for so many Kentuckians. And that is very important. “And you know what? Who stops them along the way? Who stops the president from doing these things? Mitch McConnell. And I think that that’s very important, and that’s going to be my message – the things that Kentuckians voted for Trump for are not being done. He’s not able to get it done because of Senator McConnell.” If only Joe Manchin were a woman! Oh, and if you use the DNC’s voter file, as Warren does (and Sanders does not), you are contractually obligated to fundraise for them. No doubt that figured in Warren’s decision.

Warren (D)(3): “The Attack On Elizabeth Warren That Could Actually Matter” [Yahoo News]. “But the attacks that could land the most damage focus on Warren’s trustworthiness on health care, the No. 1 issue for voters in both the Democratic primary and in the general election, according to polling. Though Warren has rolled her out own detailed policy plans on everything from gun control to child care to rural economic development, she is the only leading candidate to avoid releasing her own health care plan, instead endorsing Sanders’ “Medicare for All” legislation while saying she remains open to alternatives.The position has left her vulnerable to attacks from Sanders supporters as well as from opponents of Medicare for All, which would eliminate private health insurance and require the government to pay for Americans’ health coverage. Warren’s steady rise in the Democratic primary has come, in large part, from her ability to appeal to both the party’s mainstream and left-wing branches, but health care is an issue that could turn chunks of both groups against her and undercut her central image as a candidate with a brilliant idea for every problem.” • As I’ve been saying.

Yang (D)(1): “I Was Andrew Yang’s First ‘Freedom Dividend’ Recipient – When He Fired Me” [Gotham Gazette]. “Imagine my surprise, then, that on the third day that I was back to work after my honeymoon in 2007, Andrew Yang fired me. Our private discussion, in his office with the door closed, began with Andrew’s remarks that because I was married, I wouldn’t want to continue working as hard as I had been. That as a wife, I’d be focused on my new life.” • Whoops.

* * *

“The Seven Stages of Establishment Backlash: Corbyn/Sanders Edition” [Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept]. From 2016, still germane. I think we are well into Stage 4. In other words, you ain’t seen nuthin yet.

2019

“AOC fighting to block massive ‘Walmart of Liquor’ from her Queens district” [New York Post]. “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is fighting to block a massive booze retail store that critics call the “Walmart of Liquor” from opening on her turf in College Point, Queens…. ‘I am deeply concerned about the potential impacts that MCT Fine Wine & Spirits would have on the local small business community. As a large retailer with ties to a billion dollar nationwide chain, Total Wines has access to resources and economies of scale with which smaller retailers could not compete,’ she said.” • Good for her (says Stoller). Makes me wonder who Total Wines owns — or, to be fair, rents — in New York.

Health Care

As I keep saying, forestalling #MedicareForAll is liberal Democrats’ #1 policy priority:

So Warren crawfishing (here, here) on it makes all the sense in the world, from the perspective of “the party decides.”

Impeachment

“The impeachment panacea” [Damon Linker, The Week]. “The endless debate about whether this or that example of Trumpian bad behavior is “impeachable” therefore completely misses the point. The fact is that anything can be impeachable, provided there is sufficient public support. Likewise, impeachment (let alone conviction and removal by the Senate, which requires a super-majority of 67 votes in the upper chamber) will never happen if there isn’t sufficient consensus in favor — or if those in a position of power lack confidence in their ability to change minds and build such a consensus through persuasion once the process has gotten underway. Pelosi obviously has no such confidence. Is her fatalism warranted? At the level of brute electoral calculation, it may well be. A number of her party’s gains in 2018 were won in conservative-leaning districts that she fears could flip back to the GOP if the House majority goes too far in challenging the president.” • I love the way that everybody, even the reasonably aware writers at The Week, treats the Democrat focus in 2018 on “conservative-leaning districts” as some sort of natural event, instead of a conscious political choice. In fact, the Democrats ran exactly the same play in 2006, when the Blue Dogs first got their start. More: “[M]any others are well aware that [Trump is] corrupt. They just see the corruption as a slightly more egregious form of the debasement that pervades Washington and elite culture more broadly…. As my colleague Bonnie Kristian recently put it in an insightful column, other presidential aspirants hire expensive and highly skilled teams of hard-nosed opposition researchers to dig up dirt on their opponents. Trump just calls the president of Ukraine and twists his arm to get him to do the work for him. The two approaches are different, yes. But precisely how different? Are they really different in kind?” • They are different and different in kind because the liberal Democrat approach makes highly credentialed professionals essential to the process. I mean, surely sending your clothes to the laundry isn’t the same as doing the washing yourself, personally [aghast face]?

Pollsters

I suppose I can throw Silver into this bucket:

Surely dregs leavings dross scum trash balance would have been a better word?

“Some Polls Come Up With Conclusions First– And Then Fill In The Numbers… Especially When They Think God Is On Their Side” [Down with Tyranny]. More on that Focus on Rural America poll: “An organization called Focus on Rural America– that’s founded by someone who worked for Bill Clinton, ran paid campaigns for Obama– that’s advised by someone who worked as State director for Hickenlooper– that’s chaired by someone who has apparent allegiance to one of the Democratic primary candidates– specifically– Elizabeth Warren– publish just memo of the poll where Bernie is getting lower vote share than Pete Buttigieg.”

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Democrats rally behind incumbents as Lipinski takes liberal fire” [The Hill]. “Democrats are rallying behind their incumbents after a small band of liberal lawmakers endorsed a primary challenge to Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.) in a deep blue Chicagoland district…. But the attacks on a sitting colleague have unsettled a number of Democrats now rushing to Lipinski’s defense…. Backed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other party leaders, these voices are urging Democrats to stick together, protect their incumbents and embrace the diversity of views — even conservative ones — that could pay dividends in battleground districts next year. ‘We all need to realize that the Democratic Party is a party of a big tent, and so we have to be tolerant of other member’s views and not go after each other in party primaries,’ said Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) who faced his own primary challenge last year. ” • “Don’t ever take sides with anyone against the Family again. Ever.”

“2020 campaigns get Trump administration help on cybersecurity, counterintelligence” [NBC]. “As campaigns work to safeguard their websites, databases and email systems, the federal government has been providing defensive briefings to all the Democratic campaigns that will take them, U.S. and campaign officials tell NBC News. The effort has involved the FBI, the Homeland Security Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees all the U.S. spy agencies.” • Awesome. Frankly, I think the only way to be safe is placing a representative of the intelligence community in every campaign’s staff. I mean, if there isn’t one already.

“The Democratic Party is suffused with wretched cowardice” [Ryan Cooper, The Week]. “In the run-up to the 2018 midterms, a major element of Democratic Party messaging was that the party would serve as a check on President Trump and the Republican Party [lol]…. There’s just one problem: Great swathes of the Democratic structure are permeated to their very marrow with moral rot and cowardice, unwilling to do anything but the most superficial acts to check the GOP — and indeed often conspiring with them to preserve Republican dominance, as Democrats in the North Carolina state legislature did Monday…. For years now, activists and civil rights groups have been pursuing expensive legal action to overturn the egregious Republican gerrymandering of the state’s district boundaries (at both the state and federal level). They recently succeeded with a state Supreme Court ruling tossing out the current maps and asking the legislature to draw new ones. Then Monday night Republicans proposed a new gerrymander only somewhat less bad than their previous effort — and about half the state’s Democratic senators voted for it…. If America is to survive as a democratic republic into the medium term, these tepid dishwater Democrats have to go.” • Sounds like there’s rather a lot of them at the DNC’s Women’s Leadership Forum conference!

“Which 2020 Democrats get the most campaign cash from wealthy donors?” [Open Secrets]. “South Bend, Ind., Mayor and top-tier fundraiser Pete Buttigieg is the most popular among CEOs, consultants, realtors, accountants and physicians, among others. Former Vice President Joe Biden gets the most from investors, presidents, attorneys and chiropractors. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) wins with executives and entrepreneurs.”

The more lavish the executive suites, the sicker the institution?

Stats Watch

Chicago Fed National Activity Index, August 2019: “A snapback for manufacturing production led a jump into the positive column for the national activity index” [Econoday]. “Manufacturing has been the center of weakness for this indicator but posted a strong gain in August’s industrial production report.”

Purchasing Managers’ Index Composite FLASH, September 2019: “Nearly flat are the results of both September’s manufacturing PMI, at 51.0, and services PMI, 50.9. The composite for the month is 51.0 and little changed from August’s 51.2 in a two-month stretch that is the weakest for these data in more than three years” [Econoday]. “Companies can keep up activity like production, at least for a time, by working down backlog orders which they are doing in these samples. Low backlogs are a negative for employment which the report notes saw cutbacks. In fact, indications from the samples, for the first time in nearly 10 years, point to contraction in September private payrolls. A small plus is a slight pick up in business expectations which, nevertheless, remain near seven year lows. Confirmation of weakness comes from prices which contracted for inputs, especially in the service sector, and were unchanged for selling prices. The report notes that export orders for the manufacturing sample continue to weaken.”

Retail: Choice:

The Bezzle: “Valuations Director, Finance, SoftBank Group International” [Indeed]. “SoftBank Group International (“SBGI”) is seeking an enthusiastic and experienced Valuations Director to join the Finance team in either our London UK office or New York, NY office. This position represents a unique opportunity to provide valuations expertise within a dynamic corporate venture capital environment, working with visionary senior management team on strategic investments, performance monitoring and valuation of our investments primary focused on growth stage world-class technology companies. The Valuations Director will be primarily responsible for determining the fair value of investments for quarterly financial reporting and providing valuable and timely insight to management on our investments.” • Oh, the humanity! Will no one think of the stupid money?

The Bezzle: “WeWork board members seek to remove Adam Neumann as CEO” [Los Angeles Times]. “Any coup might mirror the replacement of another enigmatic CEO before a public offering. Institutions including Benchmark Capital, one of WeWork’s investors, pushed out Uber Technologies’ Travis Kalanick before the ride-hailing company went public. Still, even if some directors want to oust Neumann, it won’t be easy given the company’s governance structure. Based on the number of shares he controls, Neumann has the power to get rid of the entire board on his own, according to the prospectus.” • What kind of moron signs up for a board structured like that?

The Bezzle: “SoftBank turns against WeWork’s parent CEO Neumann: sources” [Reuters]. “Benchmark, SoftBank and Chinese private equity firm Hony Capital each have one representative on We Company’s seven-member board, that includes Neumann. Hony Capital’s position on whether Neumann should remain CEO could not immediately be learned. No challenge to Neumann has yet been tabled, the sources said. A We Company board meeting will be held this week, and the issue of his leadership could be raised then, the sources added. One option that SoftBank is considering is asking Neumann to become interim CEO while a headhunting firm is hired to find an external replacement, the first source said.”

The Bezzle: “I’m an Electric Rental Scooter, and I Didn’t Ask for This Bullsh*t Either” [McSweeney’s Internet Tendency]. “How many hellish fifteen-cent-minutes must I endure before the world recognizes my capacity for good? Before my inherent dignity and utility are acknowledged by those with a moral compass? Before the fringe elements of humanity find another way to desecrate the social contract?”

Tech: “The Politics of Images in Machine Learning Training Sets” [Excavating AI]. Grab a cup of coffee, this is extremely important:

You open up a database of pictures used to train artificial intelligence systems. At first, things seem straightforward. You’re met with thousands of images: apples and oranges, birds, dogs, horses, mountains, clouds, houses, and street signs. But as you probe further into the dataset, people begin to appear: cheerleaders, scuba divers, welders, Boy Scouts, fire walkers, and flower girls. Things get strange: A photograph of a woman smiling in a bikini is labeled a “slattern, slut, slovenly woman, trollop.” A young man drinking beer is categorized as an “alcoholic, alky, dipsomaniac, boozer, lush, soaker, souse.” A child wearing sunglasses is classified as a “failure, loser, non-starter, unsuccessful person.” You’re looking at the “person” category in a dataset called ImageNet, one of the most widely used training sets for machine learning.

Something is wrong with this picture.

Tech: “Google CEO Sundar Pichai warns against ‘rushing’ into regulating AI, which happens to be vital to Google’s future growth” [Business Insider]. “Speaking in Helsinki, Pichai warned against broad regulation of AI, arguing instead that existing laws could be repurposed sector by sector ‘rather than assuming that everything you have to do is new.’ ‘It is such a broad cross-cutting technology, so it’s important to look at [regulation] more in certain vertical situations,’ Pichai said. ‘Rather than rushing into it in a way that prevents innovation and research, you actually need to solve some of the difficult problems,’ he added, citing known issues with the technology such as algorithmic bias and accountability.” • See above; now you know why. Garbage in, garbage out.

Tech: “VSCO CEO Joel Flory on Social-Media Metrics and the Summer’s Biggest Meme, the ‘VSCO Girl'” [New York Magazine]. “VSCO, like the apps from which it received this summertime boost, is itself a social platform — but it differs in significant ways from its peers and rivals. It doesn’t display engagement metrics such as likes and follow counts, and it doesn’t make money from ads. Its money comes from a subscription product with plenty of flaw-wiping filters and photo tweaks. Earlier this week, the company released the results of a study about its Gen-Z users (no surprise: the study validates VSCO’s approach) that showed many of its young users reportedly deal with online-related anxiety.” • Self-Medication As A Service…

Manufacturing: “Apple will manufacture its new Mac Pro in Texas” [Engadget]. “The company has confirmed that it’ll assemble the workstation at the same Austin, Texas plant that has produced the cylindrical Mac Pro since 2013. The company isn’t shy about the reason for the move: it’s reportedly enabled by exemptions from Trump’s China tariffs for ‘certain necessary components; in the system. Production starts ‘soon.’ Apple had received 10 out of its 15 requested exemptions for components like partial circuit boards. While Apple has a network of US suppliers for its products, many of the parts for computers (and those of rivals) are still made in China — the company wouldn’t have seen much benefit from US assembly if it had to pay a premium for some of the Mac Pro’s key ingredients.” • More accurately, assembled in Texas. But it’s a start, I suppose. More: “Apple can produce the Mac Pro stateside due to both its low volume (few people will buy a $6,000 tower for home use) and the high levels of automation at the Austin plant. This won’t lead to an abundance of new jobs, and it may still be more practical to make high-volume products like iPhones and MacBooks in China even if future tariffs cut into Apple’s profit margins.”

Intellectual Property: “Off-White is Trying to Register One Specific Use of its Famed Quotation Marks” [The Fashion Law]. “According to a trademark application for registration that counsel for Abloh’s Milan-based brand filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (‘USPTO’) in May, Off-White is seeking a registration for the words ‘”Product Bag”‘ along with the quotation marks surrounding it, which it is using – and has been using, according to the application, since 2016 – on clothing, namely “tops [and] bottoms.” In the August letter, USPTO examining attorney Drew Ciurpita took issue with the mark because based on the specimen (i.e., a photo of how the trademark is being used) that Off-White’s counsel submitted to the USPTO, ‘the applied-for mark … does not function as a trademark.” In other words, the ‘”Product Bag”‘ mark does ‘not indicate the source of [Off-White’s] goods,’ nor does it ‘identify and distinguish [Off-White’s goods] from [those of] others.’ That is primarily because the specimen in which the ‘”PRODUCT BAG”‘ mark appears is … a product bag. It is what Off-White products are packaged in. As such, Ciurpita asserted that the mark ‘merely references’ – or describes – ‘the packaging for the goods,’ as opposed to ‘creat[ing] a connection between the mark and the goods identified in the application,’ including “tops [and] bottoms.”” • Turning irony into trade dress turns out to be hard!

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 59 Greed (previous close: 58, Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 58 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Sep 23 at 11:47am. Drifting toward neutrality.

Rapture Index: Closes down one on Earthquakes. “The lack of activity has downgraded this category” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 184. Remember that bringing on the rapture is a good thing. I wonder when, in 2020, the index will start flirting with 190 again.

The Biosphere

Past student strikes. Thread:

“The hard truths of climate change — by the numbers” [Nature]. • Handy charts; horrid mobile-friendly format.

“A “Sneaky” Asteroid Narrowly Missed Earth This Summer. Internal Emails Show How NASA Scientists Totally Missed It.” [Buzzfeed]. “‘This object slipped through a whole series of our capture nets,’ Paul Chodas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote in an email to his colleagues two days after the July 25 flyby, describing what he called the ‘sneaky” space rock. ‘I wonder how many times this situation has happened without the asteroid being discovered at all.’… ‘If 2019 OK had entered and disrupted in Earth’s atmosphere over land, the blast wave could have created localized devastation to an area roughly 50 miles across,’ according to a news release sent out by the agency weeks after the flyby. Such an impact has been estimated to happen about once every 3,000 years.” • Pretty often!

“Something Is Killing the Universe’s Most Extreme Galaxies” [LiveScience]. “Galaxy clusters are the most massive and most extreme environments in the universe, containing many hundreds or even thousands of galaxies. Where you have mass, you also have gravity and the huge gravitational forces present in clusters accelerates galaxies to great speeds, often thousands of kilometres-per-second, and superheats the plasma in between galaxies to temperatures so high that it glows with X-ray light…. As galaxies fall through clusters, the intergalactic plasma can rapidly remove their gas in a violent process called ram pressure stripping. When you remove the fuel for star formation, you effectively kill the galaxy, turning it into a dead object in which no new stars are formed. In addition, the high temperature of clusters can stop hot gas cooling and condensing onto galaxies. In this case, the gas in the galaxy isn’t actively removed by the environment but is consumed as it forms stars. This process leads to a slow, inexorable shut down in star formation known, somewhat morbidly, as starvation or strangulation.”

Black Injustice Tipping Point

“Running the Numbers on Closing the Racial Wealth Gap” (PDF) [William Darity, Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, Duke University].

In this national election season, pressure is mounting for presidential candidates to make a commitment to a Black Agenda, a policy program directed at the particular interests and needs of African Americans. A primary goal of the emerging Black Agenda is to narrow the racial gap in well-being and opportunity. To achieve this, the Agenda must build around a program that will eliminate the gulf in wealth between blacks and whites.

Racial wealth inequality—where wealth is the difference between the value of what you own and what you owe (net worth)—is a critical source of racial differences in well-being and opportunity. The best available evidence demonstrates that the intergenerational transmission of resources and associated benefits are the most pronounced drivers of the gap. Families with wealth are able to provide access to high quality, debt-free, education, social networks linked to well-paid employment, better health, entrée into safe, high amenity neighborhoods, and negligible economic anxiety to their children, access not available to young people from more limited circumstances. Indeed, with sufficient wealth, even black families can purchase some degree of separation from historical and current discriminatory practices.

Class Warfare

“Grad student unions dealt blow as proposed new rule says students aren’t ‘employees'” [Science]. “Graduate students are not “employees” with a right to unionize, according to a rule proposed today by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an agency that’s tasked with enforcing U.S. labor laws. If implemented, the rule would undercut a recent wave of grad student unionization efforts at private U.S. universities. The NLRB will be accepting public comment on the announcement for 60 days.” • Goodthinking liberal college administrators everywhere stand up and cheer.

News of the Wired

“Goodbye Paul Smith” [Egypt in the Golden Age of Travel]. This is before Thomas Cook went belly-up:

No, not the British fashion designer, the other one, the archivist at Thomas Cook. He’s just been in touch with the sad news that after 23 years he has been made redundant…. The Thomas Cook Archive is a wonderful thing, an extensive repository of the history of tourism, the equal of which I doubt exists anywhere in the world. At the company headquarters in Peterborough, north of London, from his desk just off a corridor (itself an indication of the way things were going), Paul has presided over a storeroom absolutely stuffed with journals, letters, diaries, contracts, posters, tickets, plans and schedules, not to mention crockery and cutlery, uniforms, an ancient Egyptian statuette (once used as a doorstop) and much, much more. Paul made sure all this was accessible to historians, researchers and authors from around the world, myself included….

The archive is currently closed and while it will re-open at the beginning of July, after Paul’s departure in June, there are no plans to appoint a professional archivist as Paul’s successor. The archives will be managed for the foreseeable future by internal marketing staff, which means it can only be a matter of time before the whole lot is sold off.

Now sooner rather than later.

YouTube, the bright side:

This is, actually, true. There’s a ton of DIY stuff on YouTube; I use it a lot to figure out the more obscure features of LightRoom. Just don’t wander in to one of the bad neighborhoods….

I don’t think I can handle yet another social media platform, especially not one as mind-bending as TikTok (“the destination for short-form mobile videos”):

Don’t they do this everywhere?

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi 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. Today’s plant (TH):

TH writes: “A restaurant’s kitchen garden.” I love borage!

Readers, I’m running a bit short on plants. Perhaps you are all too busy harvesting? All plants and honorary plants welcome (as well as more of those very interesting garden projects).

* * *

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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156 comments

  1. gsinbe

    Re: Borage plant
    Based on comments here, I purchased Borage seeds last spring and planted beside tomatoes and other garden crops. If you want to do your bumblebees, honeybees and even hummingbirds a favor, plant Borage! Produces nectar from dawn to dark and throughout most of the growing season (mine are still going). I’m hoping it will reseed itself, but have collected seeds anyway for next year.

    Only downside is that it’s a big, kind of sprawling plant, but the flowers are nice (like blue tomato and potato flowers), and it brings in the pollinators.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > it’s a big, kind of sprawling plant

      It is, but I like that. Also, if the setting sun strikes it right, the light effects of the “fuzz” on the stems and leaves is really pretty.

      1. JohnnyGL

        I’ve done borage in the past, highly recommended. Easy to plant, fast growing, pretty.

        I’d also recommend cuttings of comfrey. It has all the nice features of borage in a perennial….so, right into lambert’s wheelhouse of ‘less work’.

    2. meeps

      Mine self-seed in hardiness zone 3b but I replant them every other year just in case. This year, my largest borage plant was host to painted lady butterfly larvae. The flowers make beautiful cupcake toppers.

    2. clarky90

      Re “The Seven Stages..”

      Confronting conflicting values – Anonymous citizen posts ‘Islam is RIGHT About Women’ flyers in Winchester, MA
      https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanPeterson/comments/d86jmr/confronting_conflicting_values_anonymous_citizen/

      Imo, the internal contradictions within the mainstream narrative results in the overwhelming anxiety that many people are experiencing. Our shared culture must consistently make sense, or….despair and madness

  3. jo6pac

    Retail: Choice:
    This very true. When the cities near me had cannery’s they canned for every brand name and all came from the same big kettles. That’s why I usual buy store brands. The store brands normal have less or no sugar added.

    1. Tvc15

      Me too jo6pac. I had the unfortunate pleasure of working retail decades ago and think this is common in clothing as well. We only have the appearance of so many choices. Good to see many of the replies to his tweet pointed this out to the brainwashed one.

      1. OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL

        There’s a German grocery chain called Aldi’s here in Australia and it’s getting the reputation as a “bloke’s store”. One brand of ketchup. One form of lettuce.

        I just wish they would reorganize the items into aisles that made sense:
        1. Crunchy
        2. Creamy
        3. Liquids
        4. Meat
        5. Veg
        6. Paper

    3. mle detroit

      I didn’t know that about less sugar – thanks! I buy the store brand (after a taste test) because $. I’m not paying for all that “marketing,” expensive ads, and bribes to the retailer for shelf position.

    4. Toshiro_mifune

      It’s the same for tools as well. TTI and Stanley own most of what you’ll see in either Lowe’s or Home Depot. Stanley is; DeWalt, Black and Decker, Porter Cable, Craftsman, MAC tools and a bunch of others. TTI is; Milwaukee, Ryobi, Rigid and Homelite. Makita is still just Makita. Bosch is some weird non-profit that owns a few other brands, but not Skil anymore.

        1. divadab

          And a very good product. Now I feel better since not made by a rapacious conglomerate.

          Highly recommend the impact driver – it has changed my life! (only slightly kidding – an impact driver is a slick tool and much better for driving screws and lag bolts than a drill)

          1. Toshiro_Mifune

            I’ll second the recommendation for the impact driver. I have the 18volt. Small, light and more the powerful enough (too powerful for some things).
            I got mine on sale with a mail in rebate for an extra battery. Bosch sent me a letter after a few weeks apologizing that the extra battery was taking so long and sent me 2 to make up for it. That’s the sort of thing that builds customer loyalty.

            1. homeroid

              Some 30 years ago i bought a bosch router in Capetown SA. Great tool, alas i moved. Now in AK coast in the hamlet by the sea,bought an bosch router again some years back. This Bosch is now made in South America not Germany. Sad drop in quality.
              Thanks for impact driver review.

            2. Copeland

              davidab and Toshiro – I’ve been planning to get a new cordless drill/driver (have been using corded drill for the last 10 years) and most of the Youtube homesteaders that I follow are using impact drivers. Can you provide any more insight about whats better about the impact driver, and perhaps what it is not so good for? What voltage to buy, any other features to look for? Thanks!

              NC commentariat is the best!

              1. Toshiro_mifune

                Impact drivers basically have the equivalent of a small hammer that hits the back of the bit this increasing the effective amount of torque being applied. This allows them to be quite a bit smaller and thus lighter than a regular driver.
                The problem with them comes with that hammer and how it applies the torque. Unlike a regular driver it isn’t constant. So it goes; 30 pound feet, hammer hits, 160 pound feet, back to 30.
                If you’re doing something that requires subtlety with wood work it may not be the best choice.
                It you need to drive screws/bolts fast it is awesome but will chew through cheap screws and bolts

              2. Fiery Hunt

                Love my impact driver…Dewalt. 18 volt. Light, comfortable, works like a bad boy. Only use my cordless drill (also 18 volt Dewalt…they usually come as a set) for drilling, meaning making holes. Putting a screw in anything ? The impact driver.
                Quick, straight, moving on…

          2. Ptb

            Just remember, impact drivers put the torque on quite abruptly, and will crush/crack less robust materials easily (thin wood, plastic parts on a car). That said, must have for car work, where most of the effort is taking it apart….

            Ps – I like the Hitachi’s, not listed above.

    5. Leftcoastindie

      I worked in a couple of factories when I was young – an ice cream cone factory and a bag factory. At the ice cream cone factory we would put our cones into another company’s boxes on occasion. The bag factory I worked at produced a lot of sugar and flour bags for various brands that would go to the same address for filling. Similar situation with dog food bags – the product inside was virtually the same for all of the brands although for the most part different locations were used for filling. Some bags would be more expensive than others which, for the retailers allowed them to charge more for the more appealing package for virtually the same product as the cheaper brands.

    6. Off The Street

      Cannery veteran here, and I’m inclined to buy frozen vegetables instead of canned ones after seeing the processes up close and personal. Kinda like not wanting to see either politics or sausage being made.

    1. JohnnyGL

      That was fun. In case you forgot oil/gas were king….with some honorable mentions for iron ore, copper, gold. Throw in some cars and electronics and you’ve got most of the world.

    2. Geo

      In response to the “product choice” tweet:

      The constant use of Cuba as an example of “evil socialism” is obviously a lazy argument but, even in my limited experience with travel abroad, it’s so incredibly wrong that it’s insultingly stupid.

      Comparing life in Havana (which I spent a week visiting) to life in similar cities like Kingston, Jamaica; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and others its plainly obvious which one is better. If you’re rich Kingston and San Juan are better. If you’re poor than Havana is better. Granted, being poor in any city I’ve ever visited sucks, but in Havana they have the bare essentials (food, education, health care) so crime and begging are much less common. People would ask for money but in exchange for a service such as showing me how to find certain notable historic spots and they weren’t pushy. Hotels didn’t feel like militarized compounds with security gates.

      And, I had a tooth extraction while there. The hospital was similar to some small town US hospitals I’ve been to in that it wasn’t “state-of-the-art” but was well equipped and staffed. The doctor was amazingly kind and spent more time with me throughout the process and during recovery than I’ve ever had in the US. Even gave me his home phone in case I had any issues in the following days. And all for less than $100 USD including meds. The woman at the front desk apologized for charging me but said it’s only free for citizens.

      I’m not saying Cuba doesn’t have its problems but comparing life there for poor people versus most other places I’ve traveled it seems pretty ideal. Main difference is no one there expects their financial situation to ever improve. That’s what capitalism offers: the dream of upward mobility while you’re pushed into further poverty and desperation.

      1. divadab

        Also the best public health statistics in the Caribbean and better than the USA on some metrics – such as HIV rates, and birth mortality.

        Socialism does some things best like medicine and education. Why can;t people figure out that both socialism and capitalism have their place in a mixed economy – and it works out better for everyone. Except of course the 1% but intercourse them.

      2. The Rev Kev

        Heard the same for Cuba. So I guess that you can have excellent, cheap healthcare or forty varieties of baked beans in your local supermarket. Yeah, capitalism baby!

    1. NigelK

      Evidently the voters want to give the whole “started Republican now I’m a centrist Democrat woman posing as a progressive” another shot since it worked so well in 2016.
      Sanders 2020

      1. Briny

        You left out in the process of being anointed by the MSM as the “Savior of the Party” to be quickly sainted after losing in 2020.

        1. Russell1200

          LOL – I favor Warren, but there is no doubt the media is in the anointing process.

          I think the clearer analogies are from the Republican side last time. How many frontrunners to did Trump roll over?

    2. Grant

      A poll came out with a few day ago showing Bernie tied for the lead in California. He and Biden at 26%, Warren at 20%. Big state, very important. I didn’t see that on CNN and they manufacture consent, sorry, create news stories. I guess I will have to wait for Warren to lead in a poll there before I hear the corporations that own the media talk about polling in California. The damn primaries are months out, and so much will change. Why is it news at this point who leads either way, doubly given that Bernie’s support is very likely understated, at least a little, by these polls?

      Just keep in mind that CNN, hardly neutral in this, took part in that poll and they have twice now sponsored polls that massively undersample voters 49 and younger. I went to that poll, and could not find age or income breakdowns. What I did find, which you can look up yourself, is a stronger opposition to socialism and single payer than you find with Democrats overall. So, I will just say that I have a healthy and logical scepticism regarding these polls, especially with anything from someone as biased as CNN involved.

      1. Tvc15

        You tube channel Status Coup reviewed a CNN segment from this weekend where the anchor very seriously asked the “pundits” if it’s time for Sanders to drop out based on the latest polls. The anchor also suggested Sander’s supporters should get behind Warren now. Does this garbage actually work?

        1. Carey

          If it’s extensive and pervasive enough, you’re damn right it works; that why they do it.

          Sanders / Gabbard 2020

        2. Grant

          It may work, but it largely works on segments of the public largely already not voting for Sanders. It can have an impact, but given the age of the average CNN viewer, they are already largely on team Biden, Warren, Harris, etc. I would be shocked if anyone 30 and younger spent much time at all bothering with those stations, and most of the people that age or a little older are never asked to take part in polls. Their parents and grandparents? I just don’t see how the propaganda is not completely obvious. How is it radically different than the nonsense Fox News sends out? Yeah, they send out right wing dog whistles, but it is propaganda that is just as thick as what you see on CNN and MSNBC. It is amazing that any of it works or that anyone cares what rich people on those corporate networks say.

        3. polecat

          Honestly, WHO watches CNN anymore … besides those poor souls confined to airport lobbies & hospital waiting rooms ?? Seriously, I don’t buy into their supposed influence for one second. Same goes for ABC, MSDNC, and the rest of the MSM snooze.

    3. richard

      warren can definitely beat biden. the 10 percenters will switch to her, no problem. she’ll never beat trump, because she has not a populist bone, and no populism, no victory. ‘08 is still very much alive, all around you. Deal with it or lose, dems.
      bernie will destroy trump, giving president cheeto no purchase, no corruption or overt fakeness to grab onto. Just smooth ass kryptonite from head to toe.

      1. anon in so cal

        Krystal Ball on why she thinks Warren would lose to Trump:

        “….the reason Warren is likely to lose has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with culture. To put it quite simply, Warren is a wine track candidate. As much as she wants to run as the down home Oklahoma girl, she hasn’t been that betsy for a long time….

        ….Voters do not choose candidates because of their ideological fit. They choose them because of their cultural fit. It’s no accident that the first to fully fall for Warren were the post-grad types. The folks who have successfully ascended the meritocracy and jumped through all the collegiate hoops.

        ….There’s a reason why Biden and Bernie tend to appeal to working class voters and have broad overlap between their coalitions in spite of their ideological distance. Neither has taken an overly intellectual approach. Both make an appeal to emotion…..

        ….Because what it really signals as my friend Saagar has pointed out is that Warren is fake. That she says she’s the beer drinking Oklahoma girl when all of the cultural signaling is Harvard professor…..

        ….That she says she’s going to really change things but still wraps herself in the language of capitalism, promises the establishment that she’s a “Team player” and secretly courts Hillary Clinton. She says she’s different but she plays the same Washington political games as all the….”

        https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/462654-krystal-ball-democrats-on-track-to-nominate-warren-lose-to-trump

        1. Carey

          Warren’s Budweiser moment said that she was just another politician; most unlike Sanders.
          Then there was ‘Cherokee’, 25th Amendment TDS, and “I have a plan [don’t we all!]”

          LoserCrats

          Warren really wants to be Prezdint; Sanders really wants to help the People, and, *most importantly*, not from above.

          Warren: “I smart, I know what’s best!”

          Sanders: “What’s best? Let’s decide..”

  7. mrsyk

    Regarding YouTube DIY videos:
    I’ve managed several repairs on my ’96 Saab using tutorial videos on YouTube with good results.

    1. Lee

      I am also a fan of YouTube DIY videos. I’ve used it for a wide variety of projects from repairing a diesel engine to my latest project, a cherry wood barley twist walking stick. Also, if one is interested in methods of mass production similar to the video of the making cookie cutters posted here the other day , then I would recommend How It’s Made videos.

    2. Arizona Slim

      I love, love, LOVE YouTube DIY videos. They’ve helped me become a better photographer, make repairs on various parts of the Arizona Slim Ranch, and on and on it goes.

    3. homeroid

      DIY YouTube videos are a great help. Learned what knives i needed to carve my bowls and how best to make them. My dough bowls are now all done with no power tools,save the chainsaw what cut the tree. I scavenge from where they clear lots for new MC mansions.

  8. JohnnySacks

    What kind of moron signs up for a board structured like that?

    Hard up bottom feeding dregs down on their luck?
    Opportunistic pump and dump grifters looking make a big score in the IPO lottery?

    The company’s background shouldn’t be all that opaque to anyone with half a brain and an internet connection.

    1. Arizona Slim

      Well, people, here’s Slim with a news bulletin from the world of coworking:

      I used to be a member, er, tenant of one of those places. And, let me tell you, I met plenty of people who were more than willing to drink the coworking Kool-Aid.

      What turned me into a skeptic? Well, one word: Cheerleading.

      There was cheerleading for Uber, which had a seldom-used office that was just around the corner from my desk. And, you know me, I’ve been an avid reader of Hubert Horan’s series on Uber. I tried to get many of my coworking colleagues to read it. I don’t think that many of them did.

      Oh, then there was that innovative! disruptive! startup that rented five offices around the building. I won’t mention the company by name, but suffice it to say that it’s a unicorn with a real penchant for suing people who say less-than-glowing things about it.

      Guy who sat across from me pointed out that this innovative! disruptive! startup was in violation of the contract that he, I, and a lot of the other little people had to sign. Well, as far as management was concerned, that guy was bad, very bad indeed. And so he got kicked out.

      That ended any inclination for cheerleading on my part. After my friend got kicked out in March 2018, I started searching for my own way out of that coworking space.

      Since March 2018, said coworking space went out of business. I now work from home, and, guess what? I am really enjoying it!

      1. polecat

        Good on ya, Slim !

        Remember when this new fangled thing called ‘Telemarketing’ was to be the coolest rage .. EVERYONE in the near future would be working from their PC in the comfort of their abode, making easy $$$ …

    1. Geo

      “South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg is the most popular among CEOs, consultants, realtors, accountants and physicians, among others.”

      And…

      WeWork: “What kind of moron signs up for a board structured like that?”

      Proof being rich doesn’t mean you’re smart.

      1. chuck roast

        That would be the kind of moron that simply wants to do nothing but say “yes” and then go play golf.

  10. Geo

    Booker: “Part of the struggle has been about overcoming voter perceptions of electability, with many saying they view Biden as the ‘safe choice’ to accomplish their overriding goal: beating Trump.”

    Had a similar conversation in today’s links but, seriously, what does it say about Democrats that Biden is the “safe choice”? Truly a party with no values and no leadership.

    At this point it’s embarassing to even be associated with the party. That said, kudos to Ilhan Omar for publically stating Biden is a bad choice.
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/22/ilhan-omar-joe-biden-iowa-peoples-presidential-forum

    1. NotTimothyGeithner

      Ignorance is bliss. Biden is a known name, and “electability” is a completely unverifiable metric. Now they don’t have to have moral positions or think about anything. Saying “Biden” and “electable” means a person doesn’t have to think or make moral choices.

      Its like Republicans or libertarians who are worried about the “national debt.” How do you even begin to challenge this? MMT? How much time do you have? Who owns the debt? They’ve heard its China for decades now.

      Booker has been around for a while now. “Street Fight”, an award winning documentary was released in 2005(6). He’s a known commodity, so what does it say about an “informed” voter who sees Booker has been around for a while and has absolutely no idea who Booker is despite watching Comcast Infotainment day in and day out. If you just say, “electability” the problem is solved. Hillary was “electable” because so many voters simply knew her name and didn’t have to think at all to say, “oh yeah, I remember her.”

      Warren’s “I have a plan” for that appeals to this kind of behavior. Like Obama’s 853rd dimensional chess, the willfully ignorant don’t have to participate in the harder parts of democracy and can get back to the spectator horserace parts.

      This doesn’t apply to “low info” voters (I know, but there are plenty of people who have too many stresses to follow this stuff or never had a good start from which to build), but I do think the Comcast viewing audience is grossly ignorant.

    2. jrs

      At least Booker is not just likable, but mentally all there. Doesn’t mean I support him, but come on unless there are way more prejudiced people than I’d think, he’s more likely to beat Trump than Biden. He could actually do a debate against Trump without disintegrating into word salad for one thing. And Biden not even making appearances, are they really going to run on that strategy in the general election, hiding Biden away and hoping to win the presidency that way?

    3. Librarian Guy

      I agree with the other replies– “Electability” based on bland name recognition is just another Cargo Cult mentality, enthroned as Legacy Party conventional wisdom.

      It didn’t work for Queen “My Turn” Hillary, it won’t work for senile senior “My Turn” Uncle Joe Biden.

    5. Carey

      An interesting quote from Omar, found in that piece:

      “There are few people who fit into the kind of progress that we all want to see in this country,”
      Omar said.

      Mmm, tell me more.

  11. NotTimothyGeithner

    Re: Nate Silver.

    Teddy fumed that Clinton had said, A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee. Reported remarks Bill made when asking for Teddy’s endorsement.

    Centrists, am I right? Given the state of “liberals” in the Democratic Party, it does lend credibility to the idea Obama really did believe trying was impossible. With Cass Sunstein lobbying for a Scalia spawn, you can’t really help but be sickened by the Democrats.

    1. Geo

      Maybe the Democrats should be renamed “The Washington Generals” because they too are a team that’s sole purpose is to never win but merely play opposition and always lose. I assume that’s why Pelosi hates “the squad” because they don’t seem to realize they’re not supposed to play-to-win.

      1. NotTimothyGeithner

        I’m not that cynical really but close. Team Blue types play to win within their view of the world. The problem with the Democratic caucus and by extension the courtiers is they aren’t really Democrats but rather nepotists who are attached to the brand or started as self-funders who didn’t have positions and wouldn’t offend big donors. The long term ramification of this recruitment policy is a party which makes conservative democrats of yesteryear such as Jimmy Carter look Trotsky. When starting their Team Blue careers, their drive for gaining elected office was usually something like a pothole which can be fixed unless its South Carolina.

        The Pelosi and The Squad (even Pressley) divide is a conflict between the minder of the status quo place holders/defenders who wear blue jerseys and actual Democrats. Its a similar dynamic with Sanders, despite not being a Democrat he might be the only one who genuinely reflects the wishes of the Democratic electorate, and the field, maybe not Biden who is an old Southern Democrat, ready for the 1980’s.

      2. richard

        That nails it alright. And it has been thus for quite some time, though the circumstances and details change. Dems don’t play to win, to achieve an agenda. They don’t play to govern, they play to rule. When circumstances dictate that they have to govern, when there is agenda they can’t lie about, ignore, or subject to “crib death” (think ‘32 and ‘64), they’ll do it. They’ll govern. But as little as they can get away with, and only when pushed by their left, it is worth pointing out.
        ‘08 should have been another of those times you know. I’m not exactly sure why that never happened; the mighty idpol moment bamboozled us i’d guess. But even if the “why” is not certain (to me), the “what” is clear as a bell. We had another legitimacy crisis. The dems were being asked to govern, to do something about it. We demanded that they do so actually, and they refused. And here we stand.

    2. Grant

      What type of person looks at the modern Democratic Party and is anything but repulsed? Nate Silver speaks for a large portion of those in charge of that rotten party, and they have a deep hatred for democracy, working class and poor people. The centrists the world over largely hate democracy. They have created a corrupt, undemocratic and inequitable system here in the US and abroad, and they don’t care about the societal implications. It works well enough for them. Corrupt systems like ours allow really mediocre people like Silver to rise to the top, because it isn’t how good or popular their policies or ideas are, it is about how well they please those in charge of the system.

      https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/23/opinion/international-world/centrists-democracy.html

  12. Baby Gerald

    Re: Intellectual Property: “Off-White is Trying to Register One Specific Use of its Famed Quotation Marks”

    As a fan of all things design, I have yet to be impressed by anything this Abloh guy has done other than market himself. Take some Nike shoes, put a zip-tie on them, add some useless stitching, move the logos a bit and put words in quotation marks on everything and it seems that people will beat a path to your proverbial door. Here’s a comparison for the uninitiated:

    Nike Air Jordan 1’Chicago’
    Nike Air Jordan 1 Off White

    His company brand logo and identity are entirely lifted from designs by Margaret Calvert of Kinneir Calvert Associates from way back in 1964.

    Ms. Calvert is credited with designing England’s road signage system in the ’60s and was featured in this article in The Guardian from 2015.

    In 1964 her firm was tasked with designing signage for the Glasgow Airport. The four arrows logo Mr. Abloh uses for his trademark, the angular stripe thing he likes to adorn many of his products with, heck, even the term Off-White (from the name of a typeface design included in the project) all came from this design project. Here’s an article in Grailed that details all of this. And here’s a link to the issue of Design from 1966 that covers the project and its parameters.

    In a just and perfect world, Kinneir Calvert would be suing Mr. Abloh.

    1. skippy

      Talking about IP …

      Thought this might interest you:

      If China was stealing US tech for years, why wasn’t anything done to stop them?

      James A McCoy Jr., works at McCoy Global Initiative
      Answered Jun 15, 2018

      The word stupidity was thrown around in the responses. The situation was not created by stupidity but by greed.

      China was a poor, backward country that foreign investors and corporations came to take advantage of. Along with the lack of development came a lack of legal infrastructure. No labor laws, no pollution laws,…. The communist nature left a void in intellectual property laws.

      China was not stealing technology. Stealing is a legal term. Everything that was done was legal. Those companies chose to do business in China, knowing that they did not have legal protection.

      They continued to do business in China because they were making more money than they were losing. Then things changed…inflation, labor costs, shipping etc…suddenly the losses seemed greater.

      China did not need to change their laws as the situation was not hurting them. Now they are feeling the pressure to change.

      If every company harmed by the lack of legal protection pulled out then the laws would change fast. If they are still in China its because the benefits outweigh the risk.

      https://www.quora.com/If-China-was-stealing-US-tech-for-years-why-wasnt-anything-done-to-stop-them

      I would add that I was there watching the whole thing unfold, everyone and their dog ran to China for first mover advantage for a quick pay day of squillions, never even considered long term ramifications. Now it seems some need to white wash history so they don’t look like idiots and sell outs to the unwashed – China stole all your stuff …. but the money we made doing it is all ours … we earned it …

      1. Monty

        Intellectual Property is a social construct!

        The great thing about stealing it is, you don’t need a very big window to get it out.

        1. NigelK

          Rationalize your theft of someone else’s labor however you want, it’s still theft of someone else’s labor. I’m guessing if your job was in publishing, film, or TV you’d sing a different tune. But you just want to steal and not feel bad about it, so…wheeee!

          1. Monty

            Calm down Nigel. No need to go casting aspersions!

            My point is, it is only theft if it happens is an area governed by U.S. law or some other jurisdiction that upholds the legal concept of intellectual property. In the same way, it’s not illegal for women to drive in the US, just because its a crime in Saudi Arabia. Laws are very much a construct of the society they apply to.

          3. skippy

            I think the issue is investors and corps went to China with forethought, anyone that failed to investigate thoroughly cannot claim ignorance as a defense. The latter would seem a small batch compared to those with established protocols for such undertakings, which would have been risk weighted.

            Hence it screams of chutzpah for anyone to use the term they stole from us.

    1. Jason Boxman

      I saw that yesterday and it’s absolutely worth reading. And GE, which essentially became a financial company, makes an appearance as well.

    2. Goyo Marquez

      That article is a must read. I texted it to my contacts, with some quotes and thoughts:
      “The Boeing board is now led by David Calhoun, still another Jack Welch protégé, with nothing but an accounting B.S. from Virginia Tech, who had run four GE divisions by the time he turned 49—something of a real-life version of Jack Donaghy, the swashbuckling GE hired gun played by Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock.”

      “But it’s also true that no one who knew anything about anything thought it was a good idea to slash research and development spending, lay off half the engineers, or subcontract whole chunks of a plane without designing it first. It hardly mattered. “It was two camps of managers, the Boeing Boy Scouts and the ‘hunter killer assassins,’” remembered Cynthia Cole, a former Boeing engineer who led the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) during the 787 saga. “How do you merge those two management philosophies? The hunter killer assassins will destroy the Boy Scouts. That’s what happens.” 


      Gresham’s law rears it’s ugly head.

      I think the biggest mistake we’ve made as a country was Reagan cutting the upper tax rates from 95%.

      Up till then there was nothing to gain from being greedy.

      Now people will sell their neighbors to a fiery death so they can brag to their friends that they make 10% more than them.

      1. JBird4049

        I sometimes think that it is not ideology, intelligence, or even commonsense, but goals that cause disasters like the 787 Max. Those hunter killer assassins are out to make as much money as quickly as possible, which usually means burn it all down as quickly as possible, while the Boy Scouts wanted to build planes while making money as a benefit; a company I worked at was almost sold and the great worry was that our very profitable business would be stripped of all its physical assets and the workers fired as that would have made a very, very large profit immediately rather than just a fair profit over several years.

        That is the Boy Scouts’ problem as they assume that the other side also wants to have a functional company, when instead the hunter killer assassins just want to butcher it. That is also one of the reasons the American economy is dissolving so fast for whatever the problems of capitalism, in the past the goal was usually to maintain a profitable business, while currently the goal is usally just to slurp up money now, now, now in the current quarter, not in the next few years.

        It is like the difference to addicted to powered cocaine and being addicted to crack cocaine.

        1. inode_buddha

          Either way, greed is still a form of addiction. I posit that is is a spiritual illness, because people are trying to fulfill spiritual needs thru worldly means.

          It doesn’t work. There will never be enough for the addict. Along the way, relationships, families and societies are destroyed. Always there is a great deal of deception involved — people can’t admit to themselves what they have become. Because then they would have to change, and change provokes fear of the unknown.

          It works the same way in all cases, in my experience.

          1. Carey

            >Always there is a great deal of deception involved — people can’t admit to themselves what they have become.

            Sometimes one doesn’t realize what one has become, especially when there is no clear and immediate benefit to that that realization (speaking for a friend).

  14. Expat2uruguay

    Sharing the sharing this Belabored podcast which is affiliated with Dissent magazine in case anyone is interested.

    General Motors workers took to the picket lines this week around the United States, in an unexpected and major strike that has long-term implications. We talk to autoworker Sean Crawford about the strike and what’s at stake. Then, from the UK, as the Labour party gathers for its annual conference and The World Transformed festival, we bring you an extended interview with Jason Moyer-Lee of the Independent Workers Great Britain (IWGB), a new union organizing everyone from foster care workers to Uber drivers to video game programmers—everyone, in other words, that the rest of the labor movement tends to say can’t be unionized. We learn how they’ve done it and more.

    We also check in on gig economy workers in California after a big victory, and Kickstarter employees who’ve filed charges of retaliation for union activity. For Argh, we talk about yoga instructors unionizing, and think about what stake unions have in fighting for housing justice for all.

    https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGlzc2VudG1hZ2F6aW5lLm9yZy9mZWVkL2JlbGFib3JlZA&episode=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGlzc2VudG1hZ2F6aW5lLm9yZy8_cG9zdF90eXBlPWJsb2cmcD02NzAxNQ

  15. JohnnyGL

    Re: Youtube and knowledge spreading. Yes, this!

    It did wonders to get me up and running with gardening stuff. Helped me understand bigger picture of agriculture.

    Lots of documentaries/podcasts too. Professionally made material from various TV stations around the world and also amateur ones that are really quite good.

    It’s also broadened the political space, too. I’ve found lots of amateur pundits and activists that do video versions of what Yves and Lambert like to do on this site.

    Nakedcap compliments nicely. Sometimes, you’re in the mood for a longer read….sometimes, you just want to watch a video or listen.

    1. Baby Gerald

      A couple of years ago I was reluctant to the whole YouTube scene, but in the time that’s passed I must admit that I watch far more YT than broadcast TV and it’s as much for this knowledge spreading aspect as it is for the diversity of political insight that one will never find on MSM.

      Just this weekend I watched:

      • a German electrical wizard create a Powerwall for his solar array out of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries [GreatScott!]
      • an Australian restore a 50+ year old Matchbox car model to like-new condition [Marty’s Matchbox Makeovers]
      • a mathematician explain Hilbert’s Curves and Infinite Math [3Blue1Brown]
      • how to disassemble my antique MacBook G4 [The 8-bit Guy]
      • how to shine my new shoes [Kirby Allison]
      • how to restore a 1970s Seiko automatic watch [Watch Repair Channel]
      • how hard it is to tell a fake Rolex from a real one these days [Watchfinder]

      These are just a snippet of the knowledge base that YouTube has on offer. Then there are the bevy of audio and video recordings archived from places like Dave Emory’s Anti-Fascist Archive, Alternative Views TV, Covert Action Quarterly and others. The revolution may not be televised, but it’ll be archived on YouTube.

      1. Jeff W

        3Blue1Brown—the channel title is a reference to the creator’s sectoral heterochromia in his right eye—is very enjoyable! (A grad student in applied mathematics got me to watch some of those videos.)

    1. Jonathan Holland Becnel

      Ouch. Philly fans keeping it real.

      Nelson Agulor is gonna need some aloe vera for this sick burn.

      Who Dat.

    1. The Rev Kev

      Reminds me of the guy that was firing his friend. The friend said: “But I saved your life in the war, introduced you to this business, loaned you the money for the deposit for your first place and introduced you to the woman that became your wife!” and the boss replied: “Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?”

    2. notabanker

      This is dead on the mark, really well articulated. The only thing left out is that the “government” isn’t paying them anything, the regressive VAT tax will wipe it all out and then some.

      Yang is basically telling the American public that the government will pay them off each month. Rather than governing our way into a sustainable economy, Yang’s plan absolves the government from overseeing companies that could render countless workers obsolete. With a monthly payment, the under-educated, aging, perhaps newly married – the obsolete employees – recede into the background as trillion-dollar companies continue to grow unfettered and ungoverned as they have for decades.

      1. Carey

        Yes, that Gotham-whatever piece on Andrew Yang was really good.
        Nice package he’s selling, but I’m no longer interested, heh.

  18. a different chris

    “Green Dream”
    “..they have their plan, their Medicare for All or whatever they call it…””

    Dear Ms. Pelosi:

    I understand you are head of a major political party that controls one house of Congress. So I have the following questions about the remarks above:

    1) Are you trying to be funny? I hope so. Otherwise…
    2) Do you not even know the proper names of these programs? Major ideas being discussed across the US and you can’t even be bothered to get the names right?

    If your answer is #1, I would suggest you just quit right now. Not just leadership, but the entire gig in government. However, if your answer is #2… oh wait, I have the same suggestion.

    Thanks for your time,

  19. WJ

    “A “Sneaky” Asteroid Narrowly Missed Earth This Summer. Internal Emails Show How NASA Scientists Totally Missed It.” [Buzzfeed].

    According to the article, one of the problems is that NASA has yet to be awarded funding for a dedicated near-earth object satellite. The cost of said satellite? $40 million. Nothing. This amount represents .006% of the $716 billion 2019 Defense Budget.

    If only it could be shown that Russia is sending these asteroids toward earth!!!

    1. NigelK

      This would help everyone equally, not just the rich, so I am obligated to ask:
      Yeah but howyagonnapayforit?

      /s

    3. ewmayer

      The every-3000-years estimate in the BuzzFeed article seems low – the last similar-sized object to hit earth was the Tunguska bolide, just a little over a century ago. Of course this latest one was a miss, but every 100 years for this “city-killer” size range seems more reasonable, since we don’t know if the Tunguska-to-present time interval is on the long or short side of the historical average for such-sized impacts, thus “assume average” should be the default assumption.

      1. JBird4049

        There was a fear during the Cold War that a Tunguska style event hitting a city of a nuclear armed power might have triggered a hot war. If the United States or the Soviet Union been hit during something like the Cuban Missile Crisis…

  20. Jason Boxman

    It’s worth noting that, if you use DuckDuckGo Privacy extension, it blocks the Twitter insets. For months I’ve wondered what Lambert was linking to, because it only shows an empty space, followed by the next item of interest. Now I know why! (I’m not surprised that Twitter spies on you as part of it delivering Twitter items in-page.)

  22. TonyinSoCAL

    Where is your evidence for repeating the baseless and extraordinary claim Joe Biden was involved in prosecutorial decision making in Ukraine or the decision to fire the prosecutor? Where is your evidence that the prosecutor was actually looking at anything Biden related before being fired? You have none!

    There are plenty of reasons not to like Joe Biden without repeating baseless conspiracy theories. Your instinct to compare this to the Russia nothing burger is right on.

    It is fair to ask questions about why Hunter decided to get on the board of a Ukranian oil company. That has nothing to do with dad (at least as far as we know today). But the “prosecutor was fired” claim is highly suspect and does not have any evidence to back it up at this point. Without more, it is an unsubstantiated right wing conspiracy theory meant to be the 2020 version of “Buttery Mails.”

    New Yorker’s Adam Entou looked into this extensively, here’s what he found:

    I looked very closely at this and spoke to officials who were involved in that. And I understand the first example of the questions about whether or not he should have taken this job in the first place. I think that is a legitimate topic to be discussed and suggests questionable judgment that was made by Hunter. But in the case of his father using his office to fire this prosecutor, what I found was to the contrary. That prosecutor was not investigating his son or the company and is merely claiming that he did in retrospect.

    In other words the prosecutor made up a story about Biden only after he was fired… So come up with evidence or stop repeating right wing verbal diarrhea.

    Another flaming pile of BS—

    obviously, Fox News, Breitbart have been among those that have taken a close look at some of his business dealings. More so, I think, rather than actually take a close look at the dealings, they’re just trying to, I think, kind of weaponize a narrative that the vice president used his office to advance his son’s interests. And like I said, I see no evidence to back that up.

    1. ewmayer

      This article in The Hill has quite a bit of the detail which you claim is lacking. Yes, it’s an op-ed, but author John Solomon seems to have marshaled quite a bit of detail. You think he and the various other journalists who have reported on this are just bying to be sued for libel?

        1. Steve H.

          Too angry to be effective as either. There are so many rabbit holes that it is difficult to orient, and too many people I care about have been ensnared that I find it is an act of will to not be angry. OP has commented before, and in fact I regret even the small snark I put with the vid. Best to let evidence speak for itself.

    4. Acacia

      Where is your evidence for repeating the baseless and extraordinary claim Joe Biden was involved in prosecutorial decision making in Ukraine or the decision to fire the prosecutor?

      Isn’t the evidence simply that Joe Biden himself bragged about threatening (on his own authority, moreover) to withhold loan guarantees from the Ukraine if they didn’t?

      Biden: I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired.

      — “Foreign Affairs Issue Launch with Former Vice President Joe Biden” Council on Foreign Relations, January 23, 2018.

  23. Phillip Allen

    Further the oddity I’ve been experiencing with links to The Twitter. Accessing NC under Firefox and Chrome both fail to show Twitter links. Ad blockers are disabled in both cases. Accessing NC on my phone under Android, contrariwise, reveals them. Very strange. Any insight among the readers?

    2. Furies

      Me, too.

      Already did without NC for a year and a half when my macbook went belly up, and the antique iPad just couldn’t load the site.

      Not missing as much but now I know from other’s issues it isn’t just me this time.

  24. fdr-fan

    Youtube is even good for OLD skills. When I started work as a typesetter in 1970, I had to pick up the skill fast from the other workers, who weren’t especially eager to teach me. If Youtube had been available, I could have watched films like this one, made in 1959:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVvbWdXRMQs

    In 1970 there was no possible way to see films like this.

      1. Oregoncharles

        there’s a wonderful series called “Primitive Technology” that is both extremely interesting and oddly soothing, I think because he never says anything. He merely demonstrates the technology, going way back. Quite a long series on making clay roof tiles and building a primitive cabin – but some are much more primitive than that.

        I recommend it, especially if you’ve been reading too much news and analysis and really need to chill out.

        1. Carey

          Thanks for that recommendation, and I sure will check it out.

          A quote- Voltaire (?), someone once told me-

          “There is a certain solace to be found in the doing of
          simple things.”

          Works for me, when I remember to do as suggested. ;)

  25. SOC

    “The position has left her vulnerable to attacks from Sanders supporters as well as from opponents of Medicare for All, which would eliminate private health insurance and require the government to pay for Americans’ health coverage.”

    so when did this lie become a thing. you can keep paying for the other if you want. Bernie’s argument is you SHOULD NOT HAVE TO. so pay if you want but…

  26. ewmayer

    Re. Sorry, did Nate Silver just refer to non-white Sanders supporters as “the residue?” — Since Nate fancies himself a top-notch data miner, I suggest that the proper term for said class of non-white Deplorables is “the slag”. Cf. the British locution “to slag off”.

  27. Charged Vacuum Embointment

    Tech: “The Politics of Images in Machine Learning Training Sets” [Excavating AI].

    The politics here are as obvious as they are troubling. At the category level, the researchers’ conception of gender is as a simple binary structure, with “male” and “female” the only alternatives. At the level of the image label is the assumption that someone’s gender identity can be ascertained through a photograph.

    Is the complaint here just that the UTKFace field is called “gender” and not “sex”?

    The subsequent discussion confuses me as I get the impression that it’s “problematic” to include racial categories in the training set but also “problematic” to leave them out.

    The whole article strikes me as a shallow critique of shallow research programmes. The problems raised are quite real but ISTM the woke framing mostly misses the forest for the trees. The current ML systems don’t even remotely approach the level of sophistication where most of these issues would arise in the first place. It’s like worrying about a gerbil’s stance on monetary policy.

  28. ambrit

    Those descriptions paired with pictures of various humans in “The politics of images…” make sense if you are using basic Calvinism as your philosophy.
    Either a ‘Depraved Conservative Ideologue’ or a ‘Guilt Wracked Philosophy Major’ wrote those descriptions. It just conceivably could be both, but then, which of us want to seriously entertain the thought that the ‘Great Spirit’ is a censorious entity?

  29. Oregoncharles

    ” In fact, the Democrats ran exactly the same play in 2006, when the Blue Dogs first got their start. ”

    And that is the year that affiliation with the “major” parties began its plummet. The numbers seem to have stabilized, but at 44% “independent” (everybody else) is a commanding plurality, approaching a majority.

  30. Expat2uruguay

    From opensecrets.org

    “South Bend, Ind., Mayor and top-tier fundraiser Pete Buttigieg is the most popular among CEOs, consultants, realtors, accountants and physicians, among others. Former Vice President Joe Biden gets the most from investors, presidents, attorneys and chiropractors. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) wins with executives and entrepreneurs.”

    I’m just a little confused because according to this, Buttigieg is popular with CEOs, Biden is popular with “presidents”, and Harris is popular with “executives”.

    Couldn’t those all be different names for the same group of people?

  32. Tom Stone

    I do like Adam Neumann, he sold being a money losing landlord as being Disruptive! and High Tech!
    And managed to suck $700 MM and change out of the “WE” corporation before it ever came close to going public.
    A little self dealing here, a lot of borrowing there using stock as collateral and you have enough $ for a starter home in Atherton.
    With a little change left over.
    Love the name “WE” it’s almost as though Neumann said to himself “I’m going to put together a business plan that amounts to pissing down the Investor’s legs while telling them it’s raining,
    and I’m going to become obscenely wealthy while doing it”

    He’s a man who understands how things work.

    1. Carey

      For some reason, reading your comment about billionaire Adam Neumann made me think of
      Bernie Sanders at the last debate, emotionally detailing the horrific hardships of our sickcare / wealth extraction mechanism; only for JoeBiden to say, in bizarre response: “This is America!”

      Someone please, please tell me what Biden meant with those words.

  33. VietnamVet

    “Houston, we have a problem”. Alastair Crooke spells it out:
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/09/23/a-precision-strike-on-us-credibility-shattering-us-paradigm/

    Donald Trump’s hatred of Barrack Obama which was used by True Believers to toss the nuclear Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and blockade Iranian oil has blown up in his face by the Houthis attack. The Carter Doctrine that protecting the Persian Gulf is in the national interest is now moot. An Iran Invasion is impossible. There is no doubt that the retaliation from bombing Iran will destroy Saudi Arabia with hundreds of thousands of missiles and UAVs. An Israeli strike at Iran will destroy Israel. As Donald Trump hinted, the only way to “win” the war is with nuclear weapons. To avoid further damage, Saudi Arabia must make peace with the Houthis. To be reelected, Donald Trump must somehow for the next thirteen months avoid looking weak, withstand impeachment balderdash, and not start a war which, at best, will cause a global depression or, at worse, go nuclear.

    1. Carey

      I value your comments, VV, but “..hundreds of thousands of missiles..”?
      AFAIK, even USA! USA! doesn’t have that many..

      1. VietnamVet

        Carey,

        This includes the thousands of missiles that Hezbollah has aimed at Israel and man-sized UAVs. Most are short range. Colonel Lang at SST corrected my comment on the number of missiles from thousands to hundreds of thousands. As former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and his accurate Middle East predictions, I take his word on it.

  34. Darthbobber

    Think I’ll tease out the implications of the WFP endorsement process and the board’s pseudoexplanation.

    So you can’t function as a single organization unless your decision making process is completely opaque, even to your own members? Because what this means is that mere members have absolutely no way of knowing what the vote actually was, in what is ostensibly “their” party. Of course, the ngo reps who comprise the board DO get to know, so the assymetry is pretty obvious.

    And yes, their chosen explanation effectively confirms that the board and the cannon fodder went opposite ways. And by a considerable amount if Sanders actually won the vote of the hoi polloi and the weighted result was as they reported.

    This process, BTW, is significantly more opaque than the Democratic party’s superdelegate structure. At least one gets to know how the sds vote. It also makes my own International Brotherhood of Teamsters look like a veritable model of transparency and democracy by comparison.

    I wonder what the rights of members are, if they include no right to know how “their” decisions are made? I suspect if I look more closely at the structure it boils down to final authority resting with the ngo control group whenever the membership can’t be herded in the desired direction.

    Good grief. The prevalence of this kind of sham structure throughout politics (both formal and informal) is both symptom and contributing cause of the present state of affairs. No organization that replicates that problem can really function as a key part of the solution.

    BTW, party is a bit of a misnomer for wfp. It functions more as a caucus of sorts whose members are at least as much democrats as anything else, and whose “party” activities generally rely on Democratic cooperation, like the Kendra Brooks campaign here in Philly.

    2. T

      Possibly not of interest but, WFP was sending me almost daily emails urging me to send moneu, become a real live member, and vote for the endorsement.

      Messages had a kind of “sale ends at midnight” flavor.

      So the whole process was also for fundraising. (Or, the WFP really try wanted me to join.)

  35. Acacia

    WaPo runs the lede, but then climbs down:

    Trump pressed Ukrainian leader to investigate Biden’s son, according to people familiar with the matter

    One source familiar with the contents of the phone call said that Trump did not raise the issue of American military and intelligence aid that the administration was at the time withholding from Ukraine — indicating that there may not have been an explicit quid pro quo expressed in that conversation. [Emphasis added]

    Again: anonymous source; didn’t actually hear the call him/herself.

    And no wonder the story is being spun, given some of Hunter Biden’s, uh, exploits:

    Crack Pipe, IDs, And Badge Found In Hunter Biden Rental Car

  37. Darthbobber

    Rally round Lipinski story. Absent from the comments of any of the establishment Pearl clutchers is any acknowledgement of the fact that Lipinski’s district is by no means one of those “marginal” districts in which even a laughably thin claim could be made that reactionary politics are necessary or even functional for a November victory. The democrats could run anything from Leon Trotsky to a Jack Russell terrier (a dog, but not blue) and win comfortably.

    So the operative principle here is clear, unambiguous and unsightly.

  38. The Rev Kev

    “Excavating AI”

    This is just plain nuts. The datasets are so flawed that it is obvious that the technology is just nowhere near yet where it needs to be. They obviously too never had a human checking the “values” assigned to these images. This article reminded me of a passage from a Robert Heinlein story where he was talking about symbology-

    “Man lives in a world of ideas. Any phenomenon is so complex that he cannot possibly grasp the whole of it. He abstracts certain characteristics of a given phenomenon as an idea, then represents that idea as a symbol, be it a word or a mathematical sign. Human reaction is almost entirely reaction to symbols, and only negligibly to phenomena. As a matter of fact, it can be demonstrated that the human mind can think only in terms of symbols.
    When we think, we let symbols operate on other symbols in certain, set fashions—rules of logic, or rules of mathematics. If the symbols have been abstracted so that they are structurally similar to the phenomena they stand for, and if the symbol operations are similar in structure and order to the operations of phenomena in the real world, we think sanely. If our logic-mathematics, or our word-symbols, have been poorly chosen, we do not think sanely.”

    By this token then, any computer that would need to rely on these data sets would be in operation clinically insane. Over the past few years I have become convinced that the Silicon Valley set were nothing more than modern snake oil salesmen and stories like this are not changing my mind any.

  39. tegnost

    OMG. Blame the victim, not the absence of an indicator light that just happened to be a costly add on…
    https://www.seattletimes.com/business/faa-recommends-better-pilot-training-in-wake-of-boeing-737-max-crashes/
    “The paper cites studies showing a high percentage of crashes around the world were due at least in part to manual-flight errors and those mistakes tend to occur as a result of inadequate training.”

    And what part of MCAS is manual again? It’s a system override.

    1. Carey

      I think “the proles need more training!” will be the refrain from now on, and not just from Boeing/FAA™ (same thing). Yet Boeing says that pilots do not / will not need simulator
      training for the defective 737 MAX..

      Mmm

  40. T

    Possibly not of interest but, WFP was sending almost daily emails urging me to send money, become a real live member, and vote for the endorsement.

    Messages had a kind of “sale ends at midnight” flavor.

    So the whole process was also for fundraising. (Or, the WFP really try wanted me to join.)

  42. Carey

    Wondering after today’s reading if NNU are going to follow WFP™ and quickly endorse Warren,
    and if so, how organic that position will be.

    “Electable!.. lots of ways to get there..” Mmm

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