Links 4/12/2021

Millions of baby eels are caught in Maine each year, but the fish remains an enigma Bangor Daily News

Supervising cryptoassets for anti-money laundering (PDF) Bank of International Settlements

The dispiriting housing boom Felix Salmon, Axios

Inflation Is the Only Signal That the Post-Covid Boom Will Heed Bloomberg

What Should Be Done to Curb Big Tech? Bari Weis, Common Sense

Apple agrees to testify before U.S. Senate on app store antitrust concerns Reuters. They agree? Who’s the sovereign here?

Trump faces a narrow path to victory against Facebook suspension Politico. The article treats Facebook’s “oversight board” as if it were an actual court; it’s expected to “rule” on Trump’s “case,” it issues “orders,” etc.

Another huge data breach, another stony silence from Facebook Guardian

Google’s Secret ‘Project Bernanke’ Revealed in Texas Antitrust Case WSJ and Google reportedly ran secret ‘Project Bernanke’ that boosted its own ad-buying system over competitors The Verge. After a Google court filing somehow gets released without redaction.

The data archive as factory: Alienation and resistance of data processors (PDF) Big Data & Society

#COVID19

All Together Now NYT. On the Skagit Valley Chorale. Key sentence: “The evening was chilly, but after a while, their bodies warmed the space and the HVAC system shut off.” Commentary:

An enormous, cataclysmic failure by the public health establishment, the press, and the political class, which persists to this day. If scientists and the public don’t understand transmission, then successful public health measures are a matter of chance.

The Need For Institutional Brains Stumbling and Mumbling

* * *

A COVID-19 prophylaxis? Lower incidence associated with prophylactic administration of ivermectin International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents. From the Abstract: “Here, we show that countries with routine mass drug administration of prophylactic chemotherapy including ivermectin have a significantly lower incidence of COVID-19. Prophylactic use of ivermectin against parasitic infections is most common in Africa and we hence show that the reported correlation is highly significant both when compared among African nations as well as in a worldwide context.”

Is ivermectin ready to be part of a public health policy for COVID-19 prophylaxis? The Lancet. “Although ivermectin seems promising, it should not be used massively and for long periods without medical prescription until results of well-designed clinical trials are completed, and in the case of positive results, it must be administered in the recommended posology.”

* * *

Some Covid-19 long haulers say vaccines may be relieving their symptoms. Researchers are looking into it CNN

Nearly 40% of Marines have declined Covid-19 vaccine CNN

COVID-19 updates: Dallas County health officials report 10 more deaths, 22 long-term care facility outbreaks WFAA. Concerning.

* * *

How the US can solve the global vaccine shortfall Agglomerations

Should Masking Last Beyond The Pandemic? Flu And Colds Are Down, Spurring A Debate NPR. From March, still germane.

Here’s why COVID cases are surging in Toronto despite early lockdown ABC

Montreal needs proper lockdown to avoid the worst, expert says Montreal Gazette

China?

China backtracks on comments questioning efficacy of local vaccines FT

A Story about an Irish Artist’s Putting Smiles on Photos of Tuol Sleng’s Victims Causes an Uproar Among Cambodians Cambodianess. As well it should have. Vice removed the story.

Myanmar

With Its Economy in Free Fall, Myanmar Braces for the Worst Bloomberg. What a miserable headline; the free fall isn’t endogenous, it’s a direct result of Myanmarese resistance to the coup. While external pressures are important (and easy to cover) what is happening inside Myanmar is far more important. Massed image (1):

Massed image (2):

Not sure about this last source (new account, R2P focus) but I’ve seen many other Myanmarese images organized on the same “power of small multiples” design principle.

US sanctions on Myanmar gems target key junta funding source Associated Press

China, Russia undermine international Myanmar response, EU’s top diplomat says Reuters

Myanmar has never been a nation. Could it become one now? Al Jazeera

How the pandemic is powering a shift to data centre investment in Asia South China Morning Post

India

I Thought My Job Was To Report On Technology In India. Instead, I Got A Front-Row Seat To The Decline Of My Democracy. Buzzfeed News

Asia Today: India overtakes Brazil as 2nd-worst hit country AP

Syraqistan

Iran’s FM Blames Israel for Natanz Blast; Nuke Program ‘Set Back 9 Months’ Haaretz. But presumably Bibi would have cleared it with Biden?

Saudi Arabia’s Yemen blockade is starving millions. Democrats want Biden to stop it. Vox

Egypt Will Reportedly Hold the Ever Given Pending Reimbursement for Calamity New York Magazine

UK/EU

Brussels faces battle on new pan-EU revenue sources FT

French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights Reuters

ECHR rules obligatory vaccination may be necessary Deutsche Welle

A COVID Counterfactual for Europe Yasia Varoufakis, Project Syndicate

Guillermo Lasso: Conservative ex-banker elected Ecuador president BBC

Tens of Millions in Florida Properties Linked to Ecuadorian Presidential Candidate Guillermo Lasso Counterpunch

Biden Administration

Jay Powell says US economy is at an ‘inflection point’ FT

Fed Chair Powell Warns That Cyber Attacks And Covid-19 Spreading Again Are The Biggest Risks To The Economy Forbes

Blinken: China’s early ‘failure’ on Covid cooperation helped speed pandemic NBC

The Two Faces of Joe Biden Matt Taibbi, TK News

Republican Funhouse

Due Process, Adult Sexual Morality and the Case of Rep. Matt Gaetz Glenn Greenwald. But we’re not talking about Cuomo or his accusers any more. Or, as Greenwald points out, Kamala [genuflects] Harris and Willie Brown. So it’s all good. Also, Florida man–

Is Trump anointing DeSantis as his heir? Former president golfs with Florida governor the day after calling Mitch McConnell a ‘dumb son of a b**ch’ Daily Mail. Since McConnell held up Trump’s $2,000 checks, retrospectively a proven winner at the ballot box for Biden, Ossoff, and Warnock, you’ve got to admit Trump has a point.

Hillsong Shuts Down Dallas Campus Following Reports Pastors Misused Funds The Roys Report

Police State Watch

Maryland enacts landmark police overhaul, first state to repeal police bill of rights WaPo (Furzy Mouse).

For years, the Boston Police kept a secret: the union president was an alleged child molester Boston Globe

Brooklyn Center police fatally shoot man, 20, inflaming tensions during the Derek Chauvin trial Minneapolis Star-Tribune

George Floyd

“I Ate Too Many Drugs”: Are You Kidding Me?! Language Jones

Our Famously Free Press

Why We’re Freaking Out About Substack NYT. Because the dogs won’t eat the dogfood? Commentary:

Boeing

Pontifications: More of the same expected at Boeing’s annual meeting Leeham News and Analysis. “No member of the Board represents the biggest single source of revenue and profits: commercial aerospace.”

Guillotine Watch

Atomic Superyacht to Offer $3 Million Eco-Tours With Scientists Bloomberg

$2.1 Billion for Undocumented Workers Signals New York’s Progressive Shift NYT. “Undocumented workers could receive up to $15,600, the equivalent of $300 per week for the last year, if they can verify that they were state residents, ineligible for federal unemployment benefits and lost income as a result of the pandemic.”

Class Warfare

Amazon Delivery Drivers Forced to Sign ‘Biometric Consent’ Form or Lose Job Vice

Job-killing effects of robotization may be overblown The Academic Times

Humans Were Actually Apex Predators For 2 Million Years, New Study Finds Science Alert

Study Links Prenatal Phthalate Exposure to Altered Information Processing in Infants Neuroscience News (original).

“This Secret Message Could Change Your Life!”: Wellness Culture, Jesus, and QAnon Snowden Stieber

Antidote du Jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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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.

132 comments

    1. Eelok

      If you want to understand how the Greater Toronto Area has blown it with COVID, investigative labour reporter Sara Mojtehedzadeh has done some excellent writing about how the virus spread in Toronto has been driven by “essential” workplaces (Amazon warehouses, food production, ) that have never been targeted for restrictions or supervision the way that bars and restaurants, small retailers, and public recreational spaces have been. The province has consistently failed on things like paid sick leave, a cycle of confusing and ineffective restrictions, and little to no attention paid to manufacturing and warehousing. Now we’re completely on fire again (9.2% positivity yesterday!) and we haven’t yet seen the peak.

      1. MK

        Here in WNY, a hop skip and a jump from Fort Erie, there are empty vaccination slots available all day every day.

        The border should be open – Canadians should be able to get vaccination here in the US – and we should be able to visit our favorite spots in Canada.

      2. divadab

        The Canadian Official Vaccine priorities are by age. Strictly, and regardless of occupation. Right now 60+ are eligible in Ontario and Quebec in general, with lower ages where there are more cases. Essential workers? Teachers? They have to wait for their age cohort to be eligible.

        Combine this with a shortage of vaccine – and this accounts for the panicky serial lockdowns and curfews.

        Vaccination has been much better handled in the US of A. More vaccine; and in many States, essential workers are priorised. IN AZ, for example, teachers received both shots in Feb-MArch. IN Canada, hardly a single teacher under 60 has been vaccinated. Failure on many levels.

      3. HotFlash

        And why don’t we have more vaccines in Canada? Seems we had a handle on that last summer, but, kissing up to the US, we detained Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou and shipped her to the US at their extradition request. Legal or not, Chinese customs have held shipment of vaccine to Canada.

        Oh, and our Connaught Labs were sold off to private industry in 1986 by Brian Mulroney’s Conservative government.

  1. PlutoniumKun

    A Story about an Irish Artist’s Putting Smiles on Photos of Tuol Sleng’s Victims Causes an Uproar Among Cambodians Cambodianess.

    I’m sure that the artist may have had good intentions, but this really was boneheaded in the extreme by him and by Vice in publishing the photos.

    The Cambodians have actually done a pretty good job (as well as you can) in memorializing Tuol Sleng without overdoing or over-commercializing or politicizing it. Its one of the most moving places I’ve ever visited (although it was many years ago, it might have changed more recently). We should be learning lessons from them, not using them for virtue waving or self promotion, or whatever it was that motivated the artist.

    1. s.n.

      I’m sure that the artist may have had good intentions,

      i’m not. Looked at his website for about 90 seconds.
      Mighty crass, even by the greed-crazed standards of our times

  2. The Rev Kev

    “All Together Now”

    It’s exasperating reading this as straight away the transmission method of singing rather that surface touch is so obvious that blind Freddy could pick it out. And yet the arguments about this being the case went on for months after this event. I suspect that getting infected by touch is something that an economy can get use to by doing wipe-down theater. A year ago I even found myself experimenting with disposable toothpicks as a way to use the buttons on an ATM machine (and yes, it works).

    But aerosol transmission? That would require a total restructuring of the economy to cope successfully and it would be expensive. The economy would have to be shut down for weeks at at a time. It would be just as bad as the Flu pandemic of a century ago. It couldn’t be allowed. So they denied that aerosol transmission was the cause in the hope that something would ‘turn up’ which of course it didn’t.

    In the years to come there will be many books written about the pandemic with some good and some bad. But if you pick one up and find that it barely mentions the choir of Washington’s Skagit Valley or skips it entirely, then bin it and look for a better book.

    1. jsn

      The Max Plank quote, “Science advances one funeral at a time” has been on my mind a lot lately. The “Iron Law of Institutions” has seen to it that prestige seekers occupy all our leading institutions, regardless of their actual capability or alignment with the function of the institution, increasingly in direct opposition to it (Post Master comes to mind).

      Financialization and the capture of our government by finance has seen to it there is no longer the possibility of losing prestige once one captures the post proffering it, so serial failure is rewarded by florid perversions of language. An Orwellian agnatology has coalesced in our corporate media in which only the poor and weak can fail or be malfeasant while the rich and powerful can do no wrong even as the institutions providing them that power and wealth become increasingly unfit for purposes.

      Medical and Military Industrial Complexes; Intelligence “Community”; Financial “Services” : none does what they purport to do, frequently the opposite but always profitably for those on the power side of them. The mercenay leadership at WHO and CDC is shocking in it’s murderous indifference and no doubt highly adept at the “bureaucratic infighting” necessary to hold thier post in the face of obvious failure!

      1. Return of the Bride of Joe Biden

        Alternatively, maybe we’re all just doing the best we can within the ethos St. Ayn left us.

    2. molon labe

      Agree completely with The Rev Kev–the CDC is not ignorant regarding aerosols. “Our” government simply lacks the will to replace infrastructure (ventilation, in this case) for the masses.

      1. ArvidMartensen

        Yep. One thing I have learned from personal experience in business and personal life and from following politics:
        If a person/scientist/organisation passionately pursues a goal openly, and if inexplicably they never make progress, then there is a person/organisation hiding in the shadows working just as hard against them to make sure they never succeed. Frustrating because you never learn the truth until months/years later.

        So scientists are shouting out that Covid-19 is mainly spread by aerosols. And nothing is changing re CDC and WHO. So who is in the shadows making sure that the CDC and the WHO do next to nothing?
        Guesses. Big Health Care because of the costs? Government because of the costs? Workplaces because of the costs? All of the above?
        Also see Ivermectin and hydroxycholoroquine, two media exposes for about 20 years in the future, if we are all still around.

        1. Procopius

          Hmmm. Makes me think of hydrogen fusion. “Just thirty years away. Always has been, always will be.” I’ve been hearing that since 1952. Although, in fairness, you can say (some) progress has been made since the U.S. copies the tokamak machine from a popular magazine in the Soviet Union.

  3. PlutoniumKun

    The Need For Institutional Brains Stumbling and Mumbling

    Terrific little article – so much of current events and world history by just understanding that some institutions are much smarter than the people who run them, and even more are the opposite.

    What Covid has done I think has been to stress test very clearly a wide variety of institutions worldwide. If we are smart, we’ll look closely and learn the lessons. Unfortunately, as we know from the last financial crash, it frequently takes at least two disasters for deep lessons to be learned.

    1. ArvidMartensen

      So a question? Does anyone think that the Myanmar uprising has turned into, if it wasn’t already, a proxy for the US / China / Russia covert wars? And if it is then pity help the inhabitants because they are disposable pawns, just like the Uighers may be in the future(War Nerd).

      1. drumlin woodchuckles

        If the protesters and uprisers of Myanmar suspect that various outsiders are picky-choosing sides to support in order to run a proxy war in Myanmar, they may well decide to tear down and destroy as much foreign-owned or foreign-benefiting investments, businesses, etc. as they can as fast as they can in order to get revenge on an outside world which would do that.

  4. a different chris

    >The dispiriting housing boom…The best-case outcome, on the other hand, would be a construction boom

    That’s pretty dispiriting too, actually. More farmland torn up, more ecosystems destroyed. Covid’s worst long term effect will be that people are (rightfully) afraid of living near anybody else so any hope – which was always faint – that we won’t continue to sprawl, sprawl, sprawl is now gone.

    1. crittermom

      The article didn’t impress me.
      This line especially, under ‘worst case outcome’ (emphasis mine): “That would mean we are creating a divided society of haves and have-nots.”

      Sooo… has this writer been on a very extended private vacation somewhere?

      Our society has already been divided between the haves & the have-nots for quite some time now, & it continues to get worse. The housing market is a large part of that. Uh, hello? (palm to forehead)

      1. jefemt

        Seems it’s just a matter of time before all but the .01% Become ‘The Other’.

        Baby steps to compassion and Waking Up.

        Jeezus was Woke. And I am not aware of a catalyst in his day, such as we have with The ‘rona, that helped create a paradigm shift….

      2. Duck1

        Supposedly millions upon millions of vacant houses. What is that all about? Is there a case for government intervention here? Oh, all the vacant houses are the government intervention, you say?

      3. lyman alpha blob

        Me neither. Not sure what neighborhood these people are living in, but it bears no resemblance to mine. There’s no exuberant culture of condo flipping? Rents aren’t rising as fast as house prices? If the latter is true, that’s because housing prices are rising so fast rents can’t keep up, and prices are rising because people are flipping homes. If you buy a multi-unit with renters on a lease, you have to wait until the lease is up before you can jack the rents. That’s exactly what happened with the property abutting mine that recently got flipped – the price increased 50% over what the flipper paid a year earlier and tenants were warned rents would be jacked accordingly, forcing them to move.

        And it’s not that there’s a home shortage, it’s that there’s a shortage of homes for sale. After the meltdown of 2008, there were many reports of homes being kept off the market by banks so prices wouldn’t tank. Could something similar be happening here, especially with so much real estate being gobbled up by REITs and the like? And how many individuals own multiple properties now, and I’m not just talking about a little camp in the woods. Every time I visit my folks in VT, I see some new monstrous McMansion built on what used to be a wooded hillside, lived in for maybe two weeks a year if that.

        1. Grant

          In the US, people buy homes because appreciating housing prices are supposed to pay for the retirement of people. But, if housing prices are going up, it may benefit owners of the housing, but it comes at the expense of the general public and first time home owners. The more housing is appreciating, the more they will need to go into debt (and that private debt creates new money, right?). Ultimately, it seems that what is at root is land rent, unearned income. If we don’t address locational value and the economic rent that it results in, I don’t see what can be done to make housing more affordable. But, if we do something about economic rent, we are going to cause a backlash among people buying homes that want the sale of those homes to fund their retirement, and that could anger people that aren’t simply speculating.

          Personally, it seems that encouraging people to rely on (and profit from) what is effectively causing housing to be so costly is the root problem. In a healthy society, we would try to eliminate economic rent to the greatest extent possible, and housing would be encouraged to be as cheap as possible relative to wages, which would allow people to save for retirement by freeing up money that would otherwise go to housing. Not only would tacking this with a land value tax make sense, I think, but a much wider role for public housing makes sense too, de-commodification. Community land trusts and limited equity housing cooperatives too.

          1. Alfred

            I can’t find the sources any more, but long ago in NYC some housewives were the contacts for rentals and home sales, and they kept records on index cards. Then they were squeezed out by people who wanted to monetize that service. Monetization of all aspects of real estate transactions, and the fact that now people depend exclusively on this for their livelihood makes it impossible for homes to be considered “homes,” they are now merely assets and investments to be dumped for profit, and churned for fees. I have owned two properties, and would not have moved to my present location, but I saw the handwriting on the wall in 2004–I saw that 2007 crash coming, and knew I had to get out, and realized a real profit instead of going underwater. Now, I set myself up to stay put for the duration. If I had to rent it would be catastrophic for me, I knew that and prepared for it.

        1. Neckmann

          The second to last chart is only for people in the bottom 50 percent. I do suspect the top 10% are investing in stocks and PE as you suspected.

      4. drumlin woodchuckles

        Well, the Overclass and its butlers and supporters are working to reach the endpoint, a society of have-it-alls and have-nothings.

    2. Katniss Everdeen

      From Axios:

      Why it matters: Not all bubbles burst. Real estate, in particular, tends to rise in value much more easily than it falls. Besides, says National Association of Realtors chief economist Lawrence Yun, this “is not a bubble. It is simply lack of supply.”

      (Good to see lawrence yun suffered no professional setbacks from his participation in the last real estate bubble which, if I recall correctly, did not end well for millions of “homeowners.”)

      What yun does not mention is this, published by nbc “news” two weeks ago:

      WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has extended a moratorium on housing evictions through the end of June, continuing a stopgap measure for millions of Americans at risk of losing their homes amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
      —-
      More than 10 million Americans are behind on rent or mortgage payments, and more than 5 million say they are at risk of eviction or foreclosure, according to a Census Bureau survey…..

      https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/white-house-extends-covid-eviction-moratorium-through-june-millions-struggle-n1262325

      It would seem logical assume that “supply” is currently being artificially constrained due to the covid moratorium, and, once it’s lifted, “supply” will “magically” increase unless some way is found for those who are behind in their payments to catch up.

      Now I’m no economist, but what also seems logical is that if some or many of these “homeowners” are ultimately foreclosed, the “value” of those houses will have been jacked up artificially by the previous moratorium-engineered “scarcity.” This would seem to benefit the actual “owners” of the properties–the banks-who can then resell them at a higher price. Kind of the reverse of the last foreclosure crisis, in which banks got stuck with properties that were “worth” less than they had lent on them.

      So I have no idea whether what I’ve just written is accurate in any way, but I’ve got to confess that some of these attempts to “explain” the “economics” of covid-america in terms of the “economics” of pre-covid america are just not making a whole helluva lot of sense to me under the circumstances.

      1. Wukchumni

        Oh Larry Yun
        What will you tell us this time
        You’re only dancing on this earth for a short while
        And though American Dreams may toss and turn you now
        They will vanish away like a 30 year fixed
        Mortgage fading up to the sky
        And though you want the bubble to last forever
        You know it never will, you know it never will

        And the pandemic rush make the good buys harder still

        Oh Larry Yun
        What will you have us believe this time

        There’ll never be a better chance to change your mind
        And if you want this world to see a better day

        Will you carry the words of low interest loan with you
        Will you ride great housing bubble into mandate of heaven
        And though you want it to last forever
        You know it never will

        And lack of affordability makes the journey harder still

        Oh Larry Yun
        What will you tell us this time
        You’re only dancing on this earth for a short while
        Oh Larry Yun
        What will you have us believe this time

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP6B9HttRI8

      2. Alfred

        When bubbles “burst” there seem to be those who have positioned themselves for “profit-taking.” These people consider themselves to be really smart, and whoever got hosed to be stupid and to deserve what they got. Except the people who got hosed did not know they were playing that game. Buying a home and contributing to an employee pension fund didn’t used to be a casino game, in my recollection. What am I missing?

      3. Carolinian

        I’m even less of an economist but there could be a demand side to Covid as people relocate from big cities to places where you can drive around in your germ free car with your mask on. So perhaps it’s not so much a bubble as a Great Migration–one that was probably going on pre Covid.

        Of course if that’s true then there will still be a real estate depression soon in big ciites;

        1. LifelongLib

          Don’t know if it’s still true, but in recent decades a big driver of housing prices was families competing for homes in areas with good public schools, to the point where having kids was the single biggest predictor of bankruptcy.

      4. km

        Years ago, a professor in grad school insisted that “time and the marketplace” were sure to weed out incompetence. “Time and the marketplace!” he repeated.

        That Larry Yun still has a (doubtless highly paid) job as NAR Chief Economist proves beyond all doubt that something else is at play here.

    3. Jason Boxman

      Oddly, I was thinking the best case outcome would be stronger protections for renters; if people can’t afford to get mortgages for housing, they’ve gotta be living somewhere.

    4. Glen

      I don’t think this is a bubble – this is a permanent displacement. Buying a house in suburbia is moving out of reach for Americans.

  5. warmkitkat

    Ryan Grim got slammed by Ilhan Omar for writing essentially a press release for Chuck Schumer the other day.

      1. Milton

        Awesome. Nobody from the Mod(erate) Squad has redeemed themselves, at all, during this time of Covid and especially the post-election period where members have been more interested in saving their posteriors than using any sort of leverage they have in securing slightly more than crumbs for their constituencies.

        1. km

          If the establishment is good at nothing else, it is very good at recognizing whom to buy off, whom to marginalize, whom to neutralize, whom to co-opt.

    1. Temporarily Sane

      Ilhan Omar is the only squad member with the “cojones” to call out (some of) her party’s BS in no uncertain terms. Unlike squad grand poobah AOC whose waffling cowardice becomes evermore embarrassing to behold.

  6. The Rev Kev

    “A Story about an Irish Artist’s Putting Smiles on Photos of Tuol Sleng’s Victims Causes an Uproar Among Cambodians”

    If you liked VICE’s project of colouring and adding smiles to those Khmer Rouge prisoner’s ID photos, then you will love their next one – colouring and digitally adding smiles to photos of Auschwitz Concentration Camp prisoners.

    1. s.n.

      I’m sure he’d do it if he could get away with it. And profit. From the “artist” ‘s website:


      “Using a combination of unrivaled artistry and cutting edge orbital motion-tracking, your still images of long-departed family and friends are imbued with movement and emotion. You are being given a glimpse of not just what they looked like but also of the person that they may have been. When completed, your still images will be turned into a truly unique, relatable and personal video for you to share. It’s a chance for you and those you love to experience the real emotion of your history. All you need is to send me a single image file and I will do the rest”

      creepy.

    2. HotFlash

      I am reminded of a Montreal art critic’s comment about artist Andres Serrano, whose PissChrist created an uproar in the late ’80’s. “The art party is the easiest party in the world to crash.”

  7. zagonostra

    >Blinken: China’s early ‘failure’ on Covid cooperation helped speed pandemic – NBC

    The initial Covid-19 cases have been linked to a seafood market in Wuhan, China, but scientists still don’t fully understand the origins of the virus. The World Health Organization said in a report last month that the virus probably started in bats and that it is “extremely unlikely” that the virus came from a laboratory leak.

    So I surmise that there is no conclusive evidence of where this virus originated or how it spread throughout the world. From one extreme (MSM) to the other (AltNews) one remains in a state of confusion on CV19 origins.

    On the positive side, I’ve been educated on how biological testing has been conducted (and probably continues to be) beyond Tuskegee experiments. And, how Ytube independent sites, one’s with less than a 2 or 3 thousand subscribers are doing some very interesting deep dives into topics not covered by traditional media.

    As an aside, these Ytubers, who are constantly having their videos deleted, are creating a whole news/investigative media landscape – some admittedly wacky – that is akin to substack.

  8. David

    In case anyone gets excited about the DW story about potential compulsory vaccination, there’s really nothing new here. The ECHR (Article 8.1) does indeed say:

    “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.”

    That’s all it does say, actually. But, as with virtually every article of the ECHR, there’s a whole host of qualifications added in 8.2, to enable these rights to be “interfered with”:

    “….in accordance with the law and (as) necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”

    Which is pretty sweeping when you think about it. It’s hard to argue that vaccination isn’t necessary “for the protection of health.” There’s been a tendency in recent decades to treat the ECHR as nothing but a list of untouchable rights: it was never like that originally, and in some senses this is a reversion to type.

    1. Basil Pesto

      and that’s before you get to the margin of appreciation doctrine, though I don’t think that would be relevant in the case of Covid vaccines. This is why I find ECHR jurisprudence so interesting, though. The cases tend to be invariably fascinating reading, as well.

      I find it more interesting than the USSC and the American “All Freedom/No Responsibility, Baby!” tendency. That’s why I’m not particularly persuaded in the broadest sense by this new “whatever happened to free speech?” movement, spearheaded by, for instance, (although he makes very sound specific points). Which is to say, I tend to think the defense of the Skokie neo-Nazis was perfectly inane. The argument tends to go “well, where do you draw the line?” (asked rhetorically) – well, we have loads of western democracies that do draw the line – do the Council of Europe countries’ democracies seem especially weaker than the US’ because of this? They don’t seem to, to me. None of this is to say, though, that the ECHR is perfect; no court is. A bromide for sure, but it bears mentioning.

      anyway, Hudoc’s guides to the articles are an excellent resource

      I think the DW article jumps the gun a little bit, but one can see why they ran the story; the argument’s there to be made. On the other hand, and I’ve suggested this in comments before, I think the pandemic could throw up some interesting Art 2 issues, particularly for states whose handling has been especially egregious, eg with respect to care homes.

  9. Michael Ismoe

    Irish artist: Maybe he could put a little Mona Lisa smirk on George Floyd to prove that Derek Chauvin proceeded appropriately.

  10. The Rev Kev

    “Maryland enacts landmark police overhaul, first state to repeal police bill of rights”

    When I read this I thought, wait, police have their very own own bill of rights? I thought that they were Americans. But I will be charitable here because of something that happened in Oz a coupla days ago. So the government here has been fighting off scandals involving rapes, sexual harassment, belligerent attitudes by politicians to women and it has been a bit of a pig’s breakfast to be honest. So in trying to put a line under this, Scotty from Marketing announced that they are changing the laws so that no longer will politicians, judges and public servants be exempt from rules against sexual harassment in the workplace. Saywhatnow?

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/8/australia-to-end-sexual-harassment-exemption-for-politicians

  11. Mikel

    RE: “This Secret Message Could Change Your Life!”: Wellness Culture, Jesus, and QAnon”

    “Seen from this angle, the tenets of both QAnon and the wellness world are remarkably alike — it’s a shorter leap than one might assume from believing that Big Pharma is pushing dangerous vaccines onto an unsuspecting public to believing that Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and Bill Gates are part of a global network of Satanists who kidnap children and drink their blood….”

    Going to play D.A. here and, no, not district attorney.

    Between G. Maxwell andJeffrey Epstein and then Peter Thiel and the others, including scientists, “studying” the therapeutics of transfusions or whatever of the blood from youth in the hopes of cheating aging….I’m not quick to judge what might be going on around people.

    Does anyone have a Q timeline? Did the “Q” psyops start before of after the second arrest of Epstein or when did Epstein investigations begin in comparison to this “Q” distraction popping up?

    The article goes on to delve into lots of foodie stuff, etc. NC had a discussion not too long ago about how, if you wait a day or two, there will be new “expert” opinion or “studies” on what you should and shouldn’t eat that contradicts the day before.

    But yeah, alot of Wellness is overhyped marketing of some product or another and there will be overlap with these kinds of things and religion because people want to feel like they are part of a special group that has benefits that others don’t have.

    1. Miami Mitch

      Evil people are inherently stupid. It is not as easy to see as regular stupid, but they are stupid.

        1. jsn

          I’m afraid its a matter of prestige, which sociopaths will fight harder for than money.

          “What about-ism”, tooled by big Tobacco and perfected by big Oil and Finance has so infected our institutions that CDC and WHO can propose infinite confounders to avoid addmitting a prestige fatal mistake and complicit media will support them. To your point about incentives, cross shareholding and Pharma advertizing does appear to be driving a profitable pandemic for the media and MIC (by which I mean MedicalIC) and calling out the business development WHO and CDC are doing is in no ones interest.

          Policy can’t change until personelle does, but so long as one gets to pick one’s successor, nothing can change.

          1. flora

            Speaking of Big Tobacco, I remember they also kept saying “more data is needed” when stalling and denying smoking had any adverse health risks. Sorta like the WHO and the FDA now saying “more data is needed” about using existing drugs as in-context therapeutics with C19. (Probably just a coincidence.) / ;)

      1. zagonostra

        Hegel called it the “cunning of reason” which has very little to do with “stupidity” but certainly has a lot to do with “evil.”

          1. urdsama

            Then it wouldn’t be evil.

            The whole point of evil, as it is being used here, is that they know the downside and don’t care.

              1. drumlin woodchuckles

                ” Socialize the downside and keep the upside private.” If the upside is yours and the downside is other peoples’, and IF you are evil, then you won’t care.

                Pretending that evil is merely a kind of stupid which will hurt the evildoer is a vain effort to seek some kind of comfort in the belief that ” the evil will get their comeuppance as a built in consequence of their evil”.

                Well . . . . they won’t.

  12. The Rev Kev

    “Hillsong Shuts Down Dallas Campus Following Reports Pastors Misused Funds”

    ‘Traveling the world as a leadership guy, a leader of leaders, but claiming to have no idea of the bad things happening under the leaders he produces and then taking no responsibility, no accountability for the consistent themes of abuse that keep emerging—Brian Houston is either an extremely ineffective leader or a scarily effective one.’

    The next step for this couple is to say that that they are kinda sorry, that they have asked and received forgiveness from the Hillsong church and that they have moved on with his lives now so why are you still talking about something like this from their past?

  13. dcblogger

    Due Process, Adult Sexual Morality and the Case of Rep. Matt Gaetz Glenn Greenwald. But we’re not talking about Cuomo or his accusers any more. Or, as Greenwald points out, Kamala [genuflects] Harris and Willie Brown. So it’s all good.

    I am seeing stories about Cuomo everyday on Memeorandum, so those stories have not gone anywhere, especially not in the NY state regional press, which is what Cuomo has to worry about. Goetz is getting the very least he deserves. Katie Hill was forced to resign over far less.

    I never fallowed the rumors over Harris and Brown, but the allegations seem to be that they were boyfirend/girlfriend. As a woman I have a giant issue with conflating consensual love affairs between adults and molesting teenage girls. I have no idea why Greenwald has decided to destroy his credibility, but he has.

    1. Mme Generalist

      Your comments seem way off the mark.

      Regarding Cuomo, you seem to be conflating Lambert’s commentary with Greenwald’s analysis. I can’t find any reference to Cuomo in Greenwald’s piece linked to here or in his video.

      That aside, you are simply reasserting the allegations that Greenwald so expertly shows are up to now unsupported. How is his credibility destroyed by arguing for due process and moral consistency? And how does your being a woman give you special moral agency here?

      Please explain.

      1. dcblogger

        Willie Brown and Kamala Harris, assuming they were romantically involved, did nothing wrong. Molesting teenage girls is way wrong. way wrong.

        consensual sex is WAY different from sexual predatory behavior. Many women, myself included, REALLY do not like it when the two are conflated. Predatory sex is about power. Consensual sex is about love, or at least lust.

        1. Mme Generalist

          You’re doing it again! Did you even read Greenwald’s piece? As the saying goes, you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

          Please support your assertions. You’re not just straw-manning, you’re out and out smearing.

        2. Alfred

          I don’t think you know anything about men in power using sex as currency. What you may consider “consensual” is often a quid pro quo for a job, and many women trick themselves into believing they want that affair anyway, because what the hell, they want the job.

        3. Kevin A Mason

          Don’t you know, when Team D does it, then that makes it OK!

          A dollar will get you a donut that if Goetz was Team D and Cuomo were Team R, the attackers and defenders would switch sides and neither would ever even miss a beat.

            1. pjay

              Yes, because as everyone knows and recent events have shown, the media and the FBI are viciously anti-Democrat and pro-Republican.

              Wiener was a *proven* pedophile. And while I have no proof, I would guess that the FBI could have stuck him with much more if they wanted to (my assumption is based on his past behavior, other stories in the media, and the way the contents of the laptop he shared with Huma were memory-holed). And the mainstream media (i.e. other than Fox) treated him very leniently, given the evidence that did come to light.

              As Greenwald and other commenters here point out, Gaetz has not yet been charged with a crime. Accusations in the MSM mean *nothing* these days.

              Gaetz is a right-wing slime-ball. If he was found guilty of a crime and put away I’d be fine with it. But Gaetz is not the issue here. The issues are much, much bigger than Gaetz. That’s why several commenters are taking the time to respond.

            2. The Rev Kev

              Then again, Joe Biden got a free pass on his sexual assault charges and that is more recent an event. A lot has changed since Wiener got busted. And does nobody remember the Creepy Uncle Joe videos? That wasn’t Russian intelligence – that was all old Joe.

  14. Mme Generalist

    Re What Should Be Done to Curb Big Tech? Bari Weis, Common Sense

    She does an okay job of covering the basics here, although one should indeed read Thomas in full to understand the meat of his argument. But this?

    If you want a sense of what it would look like to get the government involved in tech, well, just pay a visit to the DMV. Or watch Lily Tomlin’s classic SNL sketch about the phone company: “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

    What? If you want a sense of what government control would look like, watch a sketch about a private company with a monopoly?

    A mind that makes this sort of error can’t be believed to understand the material they’re dealing with. And, as with the quoted section from Thomas—the most colorful, but not the most substantive part of his opinion—she appears to think that being clever is the same as being smart. Oops.

    I don’t understand her popularity. Having been wronged by the NYT doesn’t make her honorable, competent or rigorous. After all, that same notorious propaganda vehicle also hired and promoted her. Not to mention her slandering of Tulsi Gabbard on Rogan’s podcast. An embarrassing stunt for which I’ve seen no apology or retraction.

    Buckets of salt recommended with all she produces.

      1. jsn

        Monopoly is the problem, not government or private ownership per se.

        Galbraith and the institutionalist wanted the government to compete with licensed oligopolists where high levels of sophistication and technological integration were necessary to sustain economies of scale and repetitive cycles of improvement, research and development. The role of the government owned piece of the oligopoly was to maintain within the government the knowledge and skills to effectively regulate the oligarchy to prevent market power being used anti-competitively.

        Good business requires good government at scale and over time. The 40 year experiment with Market Fundamentalism has allowed the Chinese to now re-prove this theory at our experience. No apologies here for the Party, but they do make their businesses outcompete the rest of the world and have used our Market Fundamentalism to buy out our mercenary senior managements and with it our intellectual patrimony, not to mention industrial plant.

        1. flora

          from Matt Stoller:

          Why Is Clarence Thomas Attacking Google?
          Republicans are increasingly caught between big business and social conservatives. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in turn has started making anti-monopoly arguments.

          Last week, Thomas issued two remarkable statements criticizing the concentrated power of Google and tech platforms. In one decision, Thomas mused on a long-running battle between Oracle and Google, where Google copied certain parts of Oracle’s software under the guise of fair use. The specifics of the decision are heated and interesting in and of themselves, but what I’m interested in here is that Thomas called out Google as a monopoly.

          https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-is-clarence-thomas-attacking

          I agree here with Justice Thomas’s view, (which happens almost never).

    1. Carolinian

      What? If you want a sense of what government control would look like, watch a sketch about a private company with a monopoly?

      Indeed. Plus I thought that was a Laugh-In skit, not SNL. It begins with the line, “Is this the party to whom I am speaking?”

      1. Mme Generalist

        You’re right! It was Laugh-in. I totally missed that. She’s incredibly sloppy.

        1. Jeff W

          “You’re right! It was Laugh-in. I totally missed that.”

          You didn’t miss anything. The sketch was on SNL, airing on 18 September 1976. (Laugh-In didn’t have parodies of commercials.)

          1. Mme Generalist

            Oh, was it? Okay. When I read what Carolinian wrote, I remembered that Ernestine was from Laugh-in, which I think she was. Anyway, thanks for clearing that up.

      2. Efmo

        Actually, the Ernestine skit she is probably referring to was from one of the little films on SNL. (I worked for AT&T and love that and you can find it on Vimeo). But Tomlin did do that character a lot on Laugh-In. (Not that I’m defending that article – it’s still terrible!)

    2. Matthew G. Saroff

      Rule 1 of Bari Weiss (there are 2 “s”s in the name) is she’s wrong, and thinks that only she has the right to “cancel” people.

      Rule 2 of Bari Weiss (there are 2 “s”s in the name) is see rule 1.

    3. flora

      Interesting she is making common cause here, in some sense, with conservative Justice Clarence Thomas about the dangers of virtually unregulated and unrestricted big tech.

      Why Is Clarence Thomas Attacking Google?
      Republicans are increasingly caught between big business and social conservatives. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in turn has started making anti-monopoly arguments.

      https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-is-clarence-thomas-attacking

      I think Justice Thomas is right on this issue.

    4. Rex

      Bari doesn’t write or think, she mumbles and hums. It’s just vacant noise.

      Count on a persecution star to miss the obvious diagnosis: anti-trust enforcement is and has been broken in far more fields than Big Tech.

  15. nmtdoc

    Maybe Mitch held up the checks knowing full well the effect on Trump and his re-election……

    1. The Rev Kev

      Could be. Maybe he figured that it is easier making deals with Biden than it was with Trump as President.

    2. lyman alpha blob

      Of course he did. He wanted Trump gone as much as the Democrats did, which is why they took turns playing the bad guy and denying checks pre-election last fall.

      He still has a very compliant placeholder CEO in Biden, plus the right wing President Manchin, essentially keeping McConnell as majority leader in all but name. Still plenty of power for him, without being kicked around by Trump.

    1. GF

      Why aren’t they ordered to get jabbed? When going overseas they are not allowed to opt out of the many vaccinations required. Why are they allowed to opt out now?

  16. Lee

    Covid variant from South Africa was able to ‘break through’ Pfizer vaccine in Israeli study CNBC

    Click bait, cause for concern, booster boosterism? It’s getting hard to tell anymore.

  17. lyman alpha blob

    RE: “This Secret Message Could Change Your Life!”: Wellness Culture, Jesus, and QAnon

    What, still no discussion of Russiagate? I would wager that there are for more “true believers” in that phony conspiracy than there ever were in the QAnonsense. From what I can gather this Q stuf was started by some trolls on a chatboard frequented by juveniles who like posting filthy humor that would get one banned on most other sites. It only became a thing once the corporate media started all the hand wringing about it, spreading it farther than it would have ever gone on its own. While there are probably some true Q believers – a few people will believe pretty much anything – I think most adults understand it’s trolling. And Trump is the ultimate troll which is a large part of his appeal. It’s only the liberal goodthinkers who keep expecting him to act like a politician who don’t get it.

    Unlike QAnon, Russiagate was started by the supposed adults in the room who had a widespread degree of trust among the general public, deserved or otherwise. I have met a lot more people who take Russiagate seriously because Rachel Maddow told them about it. Speaking of those supposed adults in the room, if they can use their super spook skills to identify Russian bots behind every tweet, why has it been so difficult for them to identify this Q person? Or why do they keep pretending he hasn’t already been identified? I’ve seen plenty of plausible evidence that it’s the guy who ran the 8chan board.

    1. km

      Unlike QAnon, Russiagate was started by the supposed adults in the room who had a widespread degree of trust among the general public, deserved or otherwise.”

      There in lies the real difference. Q Anon is nuts-o, but the russiagate conspiracy theory was pimped by the establishment in the front pages of the NYT and WaPo, to name but two.

    2. Max "Toast the Ghosts" Stirner

      >I’ve seen plenty of plausible evidence that it’s the guy who ran the 8chan board.

      If that’s the case then it’s pretty much confirmed that the FBI is the source of Qanon.

    3. ArvidMartensen

      Isn’t Brennan on record as telling an audience re the CIA ,that they lie and steal and cheat and kill?
      Maybe that is why many ordinary citizens don’t believe a word of what our media and government overlords etc tell us.
      But QAnon looks like a psyop to me, from all the tells. A “look over there” op to distract from the huge number of real world conspiracies.

    1. Michael

      Disagree. Worth reading. Historical observations. I’m no expert but experts disagree.

      <<Since the current disappearance of various endemic influenza and coronaviruses cannot logically be attributed to NPIs <> (for the reasons previously discussed), biological phenomena (interactions between viruses), which are currently not well understood, present a far more plausible explanation.>>

  18. Willis

    “Millions of baby eels are caught in Maine each year, but the fish remains an enigma”

    These used to be served alive at high end NYC restaurants.

    1. curlydan

      Not the first time either. Let’s jump in the wayback machine… When this crap happens, it’s just time for Biden, Austin, et al to jump back on the plane and say don’t call back.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/world/middleeast/10biden.html

      “Hours after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed unyielding American support for Israel’s security here on Tuesday, Israel’s Interior Ministry announced 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem. Mr. Biden condemned the move as “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.””

      1. Michael

        How about announcing the $$ to be sent to Palistinians will increase from
        $200M to $2B.

        If you have a printing press, use it.

  19. Tom Collins' Moscow Mule

    “Humans Were Actually Apex Predators For 2 Million Years, New Study Finds– Science Alert”

    Past human caused extinctions, such as those conducted by Clovis hunters, have been presented as an “overkill theory”, by Professor Paul S. Martin, for example.

    “The overkill model and its impact on environmental research”

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6202698/

    Further,

    “Nonetheless, using only temporal patterns of radiocarbon dates for extinct Pleistocene fauna, our estimates for the initial dates of megafaunal declines leading to extinction are consistent with Martin’s predictions. The heavy ecological footprint of human societies throughout prehistory is becoming increasingly apparent through a variety of environmental proxies independent of the archaeological record. Past human societies have disrupted ecological communities in dramatic ways for many tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of years. In some ways, the record of ecological disruption marked by the arrival of a small founding human population may be more evident in the paleoecological record on a large scale than in the archaeological record itself.”

    “Test of Martin’s overkill hypothesis using radiocarbon dates on extinct megafauna”

    https://www.pnas.org/content/113/4/886

    Finally, “Will Humans Survive the Sixth Great Extinction?”

    https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2017/10/will-humans-survive-sixth-great-extinction

  20. Mikel

    RE: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/top-china-official-admits-its-covid-19-vaccines-have-low-effectiveness-01618188767?mod=home-page/

    This part:
    “It’s now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process,” Gao said.

    Officials at a news conference Sunday didn’t respond directly to questions about Gao’s comment or possible changes in official plans. But another official said developers are working on mRNA-based vaccines. Gao did not respond to a phone call requesting further comment.

    “The mRNA vaccines developed in our country have also entered the clinical trial stage,” said the official, Wang Huaqing. He gave no timeline for possible use.

    Experts say mixing vaccines, or sequential immunization, might boost effectiveness. Researchers in Britain are studying a possible combination of Pfizer-BioNTech and the traditional AstraZeneca AZN, -0.67% vaccine…”

    Nobody has seen at least a year protection from any of these. And, just as I also suspected, the countdown to taking more than one vaccine brand during this experiment is being tested. And still real ACTUAL LONG TERM effects (over years) is still being studied.
    And everybody is running around like “Weeeeee….we’re vaccinated….”

  21. Raymond Sim

    A Call for Citizen Science and Mathiness

    I think NC is right place to try to get some noise going about the fact that what you might call the ‘aerosol treatment’ has been applied to many topics during the pandemic, and before it. The right place to make some noise about that, and also the right place to persuade some capable minds (I’m not going to call you ‘smart’) that you are needed.

    Just as Covid-19 is much more controllable than the average American likely realizes, science and mathematics, even fairly rudimentary level stuff, empowers us to understand what’s going on far better than many of you may realize. It’s not rocket science, but even if it was, most of you could do rocket science, My father-in-law is a rocket scientist.

    The starting point in appreciating the scope of what’s wrong, and the reason I think readers of NC are a good audience, is this: All the appalling truths you know about the field of Economics hold for Epidemiology, Virology, Infectious Disease, and Public Health as well.

    In many ways the situation is worse. It has festered as long or longer, But where are the Yves Smiths and Bill Blacks? Suppressed and unheard, I have no doubt. The narrative control is brutal. In fact just as with economists, epidemiologists and virologists frequently seem to regard narrative control as their first task. But, in familiar fashion, a crisis is providing the chance for some of those who are actually concerned with reality to be heard. Kelly Prather as Stephanie Kelton if you will.

    These people are going to need us to be a bit, um, smarter to accomplish anything, let alone to do what truly needs to be done and cope with what lies undone. The discussions I see, even here at NC, indicate a pretty general lack of awareness of, for instance, straightforward mathematical modeling, stuff you can do at home with pencil and paper. Being able to do that makes you a lot better at detecting credentialed b.s. and it lets you see that, though we’re flying blind, we needn’t be. It gives you a basis for honest hope. Gain a similar appreciation for a few such topics and you get a feel for the real power that is there to be wielded if we can manage to act collectively.

    I’m rather infirm, and I have no idea in any case how I might go about organizing any sort of effort to help people up their game, but I’ve seen from the comments that I’m not the only one who’s been making strenuous efforts at self-education. Could we put together a reading list? Some sort of forum to compare notes on the credibilty of various sources? I’m sure lots of you are old hands at this sort of thing, and as I was saying, this here is a cohort of people where it might work.

    1. drumlin woodchuckles

      If you or anyone else here knows the actual names and sources-of-information and how-to-do-it for the mathematical and arithmetical tools for amateur modeling and amateur analysis which you describe, bringing those names, sources, titles , links here might be a good thing in itself.

      We can’t weaponise any weapons till we know what those weapons are and how they work and how/when/where/why to use them.

      1. Jonathan Holland Becnel

        Ditteaux.

        And tbh any politics that needs to be understood by Mathematical Modeling isnt really a society i want to be a part of. I find it akin to ‘Legalese.’ The Public arent dumb, and I find comfort more and more with non political political thinking coming from them, which I cant say the same about Mathematical Modelists.

        1. Raymond Sim

          Once I proctored a calculus final. The first person to finish turned summersaults on the way out the door. When I looked at his exam all he had done was draw a giant anus on the back.

          That made more sense to me than what you just said.

      2. Raymond Sim

        As I said, I’m rather infirm. I had an intracerebral hemorrhage a few years ago, and I can’t count on sustaining intense intellectual activity for more than an hour at a time. Clerical tasks in particular are a bit of a nightmare for me. Even if I was clear on what would be useful to others, piling up a list of links here would use up my day’s worth of brain power.

        And I don’t know necessarily know what’s useful. I was hoping for some responses that would enlighten me.

        Do you find ‘actual’ names of things hard to come by?

        1. drumlin woodchuckles

          Yes, I find ‘actual’ names of things hard to come by. And I’m not the only one. That’s why I asked.

          Yes, I read that you are infirm. That’s why I said “or anyone else here” after I said ” if you”.

  22. juliania

    Thanks, lambert, for the Bangor news article about baby eels. One of my earliest memories is travelling with my nana to the northern part of New Zealand to a marai (maori settlement) where a small pond on a temporarily dammed creek had tiny baby eels in it, trapped. We all got into the muddy water and fished some of those out with our fingers joined as a net, such a unique experience that even as a small one myself, I vividly remember it. (Your hands did get slimy!) What they then did was make the most delicious fritters I’ve ever had – and that memory too has lasted a lifetime.

    The way they did that was admirably sustainable as the pond was temporary. At my uncle’s sheep farm in later years we kids built a similar dam that dried up the creek running through the farm for a bit. After we saw that result, we quickly un-built it, anticipating uncle’s ire.

  23. Verifyfirst

    Pretty sure Prince Harry flew commercial, no? Deep conservationist that he is…..

    The life of Prince Philip seems unbearably sad–what a waste of a human life. Likely he never cooked a meal, never bought groceries or caught a bus, never cleaned house, did the laundry or scrapped the snow off his car. He probably never owned keys, or had the foggiest what the currency looked like.

    1. R

      I think he knew what the currency looked like. He married it!

      Stavros, PBUH, had a fairly rackety life for his first couple of decades and there’s no more brutal environment of spartan self reliance than a British boarding school, especially Gordonstoun which is in freezing Scotland and deliberately embraces bracing outdoor pursuits. I am sure he cleaned his own study, kept his quarters tidy in the Navy etc. And at one point he and the Queen played house in an officer’s posting in Malta.

      I will concede he probably did not scrape the snow off his car, since it rarely snows in the UK enough to
      require this.

      Anyway, while some of those activities are fine as leisure (when optional), when obligatory, they are merely drudge work. I’d prefer his life of poetry, polo and plaque unveilings to domestic servitude.

  24. Cuibono

    as for India being the worst hit country, the deaths there ate running at about 1/15 the US

  25. flora

    re: I Thought My Job Was To Report On Technology In India. Instead, I Got A Front-Row Seat To The Decline Of My Democracy. -Buzzfeed

    Thanks for this link. Something about ‘all (smart web tech control) power tends to corrupt; absolute (smart web tech control) power corrupts absolutely’, as Lord Acton did not quite say. / ;)

  26. Maritimer

    Is ivermectin ready to be part of a public health policy for COVID-19 prophylaxis? The Lancet.
    “…it must be administered in the recommended posology.”
    *********
    Move over, Epidemiologists, the Posologists are coming.

    1. flora

      I thought you were joking, but ‘posologist’ – “a person who measures or dispenses dosages of medicine”, per the Oxford dictionary – is a real job description. Sounds much like a pharmacist.
      Thanks.

          1. drumlin woodchuckles

            Someone should write a song for this title . . .

            I am the very model of a clinical posologist.

  27. Ahinsa

    The decline of Indian democracy is epitomized by the arrest of 21 year old Disha Ravi, this February, for retweeting Greta Thunberg’s toolkit during the farmer’s agitation. The charge was criminal conspiracy which is a cognizable offense. India has archaic laws on the books that give broad latitude to law enforcement to arrest people without a warrant. These are called cognizable offenses. Once in jail one is subject to the mercy of India’s notoriously slow judicial system which could take weeks to months even for a preliminary hearing. And one now has to prove one’s innocence, or at least establish one is not a threat, to get out on bail as the judicial process plays out. Criminal conspiracy is subject to life imprisonment and death. And all for tweeting….

    1. drumlin woodchuckles

      Are there any sectors or businesses or institutions in India which are truly dear to Narendra Modhi’s heart? Could an Indian movement of a hundred million or more people somehow co-ordinate their activities so the sum total of those activities would lead to the extermination of that sector or business or institution unless the Modhi Administration sets this person free?

      As a non-Indian, I just wonder.

  28. drumlin woodchuckles

    As I keep reading articles about how WHO and CDC keep “missing” the obvious reality of aerosol transmission, including little tweets like the Zeynep Tufecki tweet offered way above, I have to wonder how long we keep telling ourselves that WHO and CDC are still “missing” it. And when we decide to allow ourselves to suspect that WHO and CDC are quite knowingly suppressing it as hard and long as they can for sinister shadowy reasons.

    Reasons like what? I don’t know. I am not a fly on their Inner Sanctum wall. Maybe secret efforts to keep non-China sick and disabled long enough to give China a head start on Ruling the World? Maybe secret efforts to help the Global Overclass realize the Georgia Guidestones goal of 500 million people and no more? Something more vulgar and lowbrow like keeping the pandemic going for decades in order to help the Pharmavaccine Industrial Complex sell new vaccines for decades?

    I’m sure I don’t know. But it is becoming more clear to me that the WHO and CDC do indeed have a reason for suppressing this awareness as long and hard and widespreadly as they can.

    Maybe if the “people” of the world can conquer and overthrow the “elites” of the world, the “people” could have a Nuremberg Trial to find all this stuff out. And if anybody is guilty, to Make. Them. Pay.

  29. Jack Parsons

    The author knows people who work at a very very large company that buys a lot of ads from the Big G.

    My source is one of the people in this division, which employs a few dozen people to operate this ad-buying arrangement. Several times over the years, the Big G touts the wonders of their own software that does what this division does, and tries to get the company to fire them all and use the Big G’s version. This software may be the topic of the lawsuit.

    In any case, the Big G might lay low on this topic. For awhile.

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