By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Patient readers, the site had problems just when I was getting rolling, so this is shorter and more disjointed than it should be. –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
American Woodcock week at Naked Capitalism. With remarks from the birder at the end.,
Politics
“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51
“They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” –Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” –Hunter Thompson
Biden Adminstration
“The Grimmest Dilemma” [David Leonhardt, New York Times]. The deck: “The Biden administration is facing an old Cold War dilemma: Be weak or risk a world war.” The article is reasonably nuanced, given the givens. Neither the deck nor the headline summarize the article fairly — Justice for David Leonhardt is a banner I never thought I’d take up! — but what that signals is that editors and publishers are more
democidally insanehawkish even than Times reporters, which is a little concerning.“America Is Zooming Through the Pandemic Panic-Neglect Cycle” [Ed Yong, The Atlantic]. “All epidemics trigger the same dispiriting cycle. First, panic: As new pathogens emerge, governments throw money, resources, and attention at the threat. Then, neglect: Once the danger dwindles, budgets shrink and memories fade. The world ends up where it started, forced to confront each new disease unprepared and therefore primed for panic. This Sisphyean sequence occurred in the United States after HIV, anthrax, SARS, Ebola, and Zika. It occurred in Republican administrations and Democratic ones. It occurs despite decades of warnings from public-health experts. It has been as inevitable as the passing of day into night. Even so, it’s not meant to happen this quickly. When I first wrote about the panic-neglect cycle five years ago, I assumed that it would operate on a timescale of years, and that neglect would set in only after the crisis was over. The coronavirus pandemic has destroyed both assumptions. Before every surge has ended, pundits have incorrectly predicted that the current wave would be the last, or claimed that lifesaving measures were never actually necessary. Time and again, neglect has set in within mere months, often before the panic part has been over.” • So we’re become more stupid, faster. That’s encouraging.
“CDC email: Let’s do better with ‘our data’” [Politico]. “In an interview with POLITICO before the email was sent, Jernigan said the modernization effort will include unifying public health data systems at the state and federal levels, ensuring the CDC is relying on information that is up to date and can be used in real-time, and helping states hire staffers to work on data collection and analysis…. The CDC and public health officials across the country have pressed Congress for more money for data modernization. While lawmakers have approved funding to help improve the CDC’s data methods, it has not been enough to change how the agency collects and analyzes the data in public health emergencies, dozens of state officials have told POLITICO.” I would want some system of checks and balances here. Today’s CDC is utterly untrustworthy (and seems likely to remain so). The very last thing CDC should be given control of, given its performance during covid, is “unifying public health data systems.” What should happen, as opposed to administrative control by CDC goons, is data interoperability, so multiple sources can use and cross-check all data.
Democrats en Déshabillé
I have moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Party (“the Democrat Party is a rotting corpse that can’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated post, to which I will periodically add material, summarizing the addition here in a “live” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It turns out that defining the Democrat Party is, in fact, a hard problem. I do think the paragraph that follows is on point all the way back to 2016, if not before:
The Democrat Party is the political expression of the class power of PMC, their base (lucidly explained by Thomas Frank in Listen, Liberal!). It follows that the Democrat Party is as “unreformable” as the PMC is unreformable; if the Democrat Party did not exist, the PMC would have to invent it. If the Democrat Party fails to govern, that’s because the PMC lacks the capability to govern. (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” of course.) Second, all the working parts of the Party reinforce each other. Leave aside characterizing the relationships between elements of the Party (ka-ching, but not entirely) those elements comprise a network — a Flex Net? An iron octagon? — of funders, vendors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with assets in the press and the intelligence community.
Note, of course, that the class power of the PMC both expresses and is limited by other classes; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial model’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to mind. Suck up, kick down.
* * * The sheer intensity of it:
My kids' school has announced a "Ukraine day", with students to come in blue and yellow. Which is interesting, because I don't recall a "Palestine day" or a "Yemen day". Some lives really do matter more than others, don't they?
— The Hipster Union Rep (@HipsterUnionRep) March 19, 2022
How long before we see blue and yellow “In This House…” signs…
2022
“Super PAC signals Pennsylvania primary could get rough” [Politico]. “A super PAC backing Pennsylvania Senate candidate Conor Lamb is warning prospective donors that he is trailing frontrunner John Fetterman by 30 percentage points in the Democratic primary — and that the public’s perception of his opponent’s ideology must change for Lamb to have a shot. ‘[P]rimary voters don’t yet see Fetterman as the liberal he is,’ reads a memo circulated by the pro-Lamb group Penn Progress, which was obtained by POLITICO. ‘For Conor Lamb to have a path in the primary, this dynamic needs to change.'” • Democrats, mind you. The Democrats already have one Manchin. Do they really need two?
“DiNapoli’s belated nursing-home audit the final nail in Cuomo’s political coffin” [New York Post]. “Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is reportedly considering a run against Gov. Kathy Hochul, but a devastating audit Tuesday by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli should nip that crazy notion in the bud. Instead of providing model ‘leadership’ in the fight against COVID, as Cuomo continues to pretend he did, DiNapoli says New York’s response at nursing homes was among the worst in the nation. Plus, the comptroller charges Team Cuomo with politicizing the Department of Health — intentionally misleading the public and suppressing facts in reporting COVID deaths at nursing homes. DOH ‘was not transparent,’ the audit states bluntly. It ‘routinely underreported death counts,’ by as much as 100%. From April 2020 to February 2021, it failed to account for 4,100 nursing-home lives lost to the virus, falling ‘far short’ of its ‘moral’ responsibilities…. At the heart of the scandal, of course: Team Cuomo’s order for nursing homes to accept COVID-contagious patients, even though the then-gov himself rightly warned the virus could spread ‘like fire through dry grass’ at such facilities. The delays and lies were meant to hide the resulting deaths.”
“Why Early Senate And Governor Polls Have Plenty To Tell Us About November” [FiveThirtyEight]. “Early polls have also tended to “call” races correctly more often than not this far out, though that’s a bit of a quick-and-dirty way to understand polling accuracy. In a weighted average, early Senate polls have identified the eventual winner 76 percent of the time, while early gubernatorial polls have been right 78 percent of the time. This is only marginally worse than polls conducted in the last three weeks of the campaign, which averaged out to 81 percent for the Senate and 83 percent for governor races from 1998 to 2020. But there’s a catch with the topline numbers for early surveys: Polls that show close races for Senate or governor — those with margins between 0 and 5 points — are essentially coin flips when it comes to being correct in November, as the table shows. The likelihood that polls nailed the eventual winner in races where the candidate has a 5-to-10 point edge or a double-digit lead is much higher, though, at roughly 75 percent and 90 percent of the time, respectively.”
2024
“Gas Prices and Presidential Approval” [Sabato’s Crystal Ball]. “the recent spike in gas prices raises a key question: Is there any connection between high gas prices and presidential approval? The short answer is that there appears to be some connection between higher gas prices and lower presidential approval, but the connection is not that strong, and it has become weaker in recent years. It makes some sense that whatever the connection between gas prices and presidential approval is, the connection might be weaker now than in the past, simply because presidential approval ratings are not as dynamic as they used to be. Both Barack Obama and (especially) Donald Trump had remarkably stable approval ratings, and Biden’s has not jumped around much either, declining from the mid-50s at the start of his term to the low 40s now. And most recently, consider this: Even as gas prices have spiked in the past couple of weeks in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden’s approval rating has actually gone up slightly, as measured by the FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics averages. His average approval in both on March 1 was 41% approve/54% disapprove; as of Wednesday, his approval was up about 1-2 points and his disapproval was down about 1-2 points in both averages. Biden may be experiencing a minor “rally-around-the-flag” effect as the nation watches the war unfold in Ukraine. He also may have received a tiny bump from his State of the Union address, delivered on March 1. Regardless, this most recent round of gas price spikes hasn’t pushed his approval further downward. But, over the long run, have higher gas prices since Biden took office contributed to his declining standing? Quite possibly, but it’s difficult to prove and there likely are a lot of other reasons that have contributed to his decline. That a president would prefer to have lower gas prices than higher ones is obvious. That high gas prices actually do contribute to lower presidential approval is not as obvious, although there is some limited evidence for it based on what we’ve found in our research. But we also are in an era of fairly stable presidential approval ratings, meaning that it shouldn’t be surprising that whatever impact a single factor (gas prices) might have on presidential approval, the importance of that factor might be declining.” • I think the assumption here is that the effect of high gas prices on the electorate is a constant. Today’s electorate may not be able to take gas hikes in stride, as past electorates seem to have done. (This to be distinguished from media coverage of the topic.)
Republican Funhouse
“‘Defcon 1 moment’: New Spanish-language conservative network fuels fresh Dem fears over disinfo, Latino outreach” [NBC]. “The network, called Americano, arrives during a crucial inflection point in U.S. politics, as more Hispanic voters show signs of drifting right and Democrats continue to sound the alarm about Spanish-language right-wing disinformation on social media and local radio, particularly in Miami, which is also Americano’s home base…. ‘For those concerned about the disinformation problem harming Democrats’ chances with Hispanics, this is a Defcon 1 moment. We should worry,’ Amandi said. ‘The Democrats’ response to all of this Hispanic outreach from Republicans — whether it’s disinformation or conventional campaigning — is to do the bare minimum. Unfortunately, some Democrats are deluding themselves. The ultimate act of disinformation is to pretend that this is not a big problem.'” • I’m more worried about how Democrats are coming to view electorical politics as a form of counterintelligence. Of course, at the level of oppo, that’s always been true, but “disinformation” is next level.
#COVID19
Case count by United States regions:
So cases really have leveled out. This is the new normal, I suppose.
Fellow tapewatchers will note that “up like a rocket, down like a stick” phase is done with, and the case count is now leveling out. At a level that, a year ago, was considered a crisis, but we’re “over” Covid now, so I suppose not. I have added a Fauci Line.
NOTE I shall most certainly not be using the CDC’s new “Community Level” metric. Because CDC has combined a leading indicator (cases) with a lagging one (hospitalization) their new metric is a poor warning sign of a surge, and a poor way to assess personal risk. In addition, Covid is a disease you don’t want to get. Even if you are not hospitalized, you can suffer from Long Covid, vascular issues, and neurological issues. For these reasons, case counts — known to be underestimated, due to home test kits — deserve to stand alone as a number to be tracked, no matter how much the political operatives in CDC leadership would like to obfuscate it.
The official narrative is “Covid is Over.” In the fall, the official narrative was “Covid is behind us,” and that the pandemic will be “over by January” (Gottlieb), and “I know some people seem to not want to give up on the wonderful pandemic, but you know what? It’s over” (Bill Maher). That narrative was completely exploded. What a surprise! This time, it may be different. But who knows?
“The New Phase of the Pandemic Is Covid Exhaustion” (transcript) [New York Times]. Monica Ghandi: “So telling people the cases every day is really scary, I think, and can look really scary. And that’s not at all what happens with endemic management of other viruses. What happens is that the health departments track cases, but the public doesn’t click on a link and know the number of cases in the United States. Also, by the way, people are doing home testing and it’s not even — those aren’t reflected in those numbers. So those are underestimating the cases. So I think it’s important to stop reporting cases out to the public. People can know them if they want. But health departments should track cases. Health departments should track wastewater surveillance. And what we should be telling the public is what’s the burden of your disease in prevalence of disease in your hospitals.” • Oh.
MWRA (Boston-area) wastewater detection:
The MRWA is divided into two sections, North and South. Both have started rising, and now the rise has visibly affected this chart, which aggregates them. The aggregate of the enormous Omicron spike conceals change, but change there is. Of course, it’s a very small rise. Maybe this time the movie will end differently.
The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) service area includes 43 municipalities in and around Boston, including not only multiple school systems but several large universities. Since Boston is so very education-heavy, then, I think it could be a good leading indicator for Covid spread in schools generally.
From CDC Community Profile Reports (PDFs), “Rapid Riser” counties:
Every so often I think of doing away with this chart. Then something like Nevada happens. Remember that these are rapid riser counties. A county that moves from red to green is not covid-free; the case count just isnt, well, rising rapidly.
The previous release:
Here is CDC’s interactive map by county set to community transmission from yesterday:
Continuing slow improvement, assuming the numbers aren’t jiggered.
Hospitalization (CDC Community Profile):
Farewell, sea of green! From the point of view of our hospital-centric health care system, green everywhere means the emergency is over (and to be fair, this is reinforced by case count and wastewater). However, community transmission is still pervasive, which means that long Covid, plus continuing vascular damage, are not over. (Note trend, whether up or down, is marked by the arrow, at top. Admissions are presented in the graph, at the bottom. So it’s possible to have an upward trend, but from a very low baseline.)
Death rate (Our World in Data):
Total: 998,840 997,933. Heading slowly downward. I have added an anti-triumphalist Fauci Line.
Covid cases in top us travel destinations (Statista):
Stats Watch
Manufacturing: “United States Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Richmond Fed composite manufacturing index increased to 13 in March of 2022 from 1 in February, pointing to an improvement in Fifth District manufacturing activity. Increases were seen in all components: shipments (9 vs -11), volume of new orders (10 vs -3), and number of employees (23 vs 20)…. In general, firms continued to report increased hiring and rising wages.”
Water: “The Horrific Scam that Water Billionaires are Running on Poor Countries” [Counterpunch]. “Mega corporations like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Danone are making around 494 times what they spend by bottling water in Mexico and selling it back to locals who have no choice but to buy it. In Mexico and other poor countries and regions, companies are taking water from aquifers, springs, rivers, and lakes, and putting it in plastic bottles or turning it into flavored and sugary drinks, then dumping their used and dirty water back into water sources. That, along with other industrial pollution which is disproportionately disposed of into rural, Indigenous, and poorer communities, means locals are not able to drink tap water and end up paying extortionate prices to the European and US corporations. In exchange for taking Mexico’s water, Mexicans give water bottling corporations US$66 billion a year. Coca Cola, Pepsi, Danone, Nestle, Bimbo, and other bottling and junk food companies extract over 133 billion liters of water, and then dump at least 119 billion liters of contaminated water back into water basins and aquifers.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 42 Fear (previous close: 38 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 19 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Mar 22 at 1:23pm. Not sure what’s in Mr. Market’s mind, here. Settling in for the long haul in Ukraine?
Rapture Index: Closes up one on Global Turmoil. “The warfare in Ukraine has pushed this category higher” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 188. (Remember that bringing on the rapture is a good thing, so higher is better.)
The Gallery
I prefer these clowns:
Jean Dufy (1888-1964)
Clowns musiciens pic.twitter.com/GCVXaN6N1r— @_rt* (@literatura_rte) March 22, 2022
The Agony Column
“Losing Nanny, inheriting her home, and surviving the first year” [Scalawag]. “The pandemic has collected character studies of the people I’ve been for the last 28 years and put them through the shredder. I hate the green wall I painted. I’m heartbroken when the landscaper clips the lilies that Nanny planted seasons ago. I have progressed past lying about enjoying this existence, and instead have named the pain that sears behind my eyes and learned to be honest about how lonely this all feels. I don’t want another conversation about the physicality of life (weight, beauty, presence, visibility), but of my worth beyond what I can be exploited for (warmth, honesty, joyful spirit). I’ve learned, however marketable Instagram tries to make the rush and the search for the perfect, most realized me, that I do exist first inside myself. The house was just a bonus.” • A milllenial might identify more. I wanted to hear more about the house.
Zeitgeist Watch
No:
for one month, i tried to speak with the exponentially viral tiktok influencer who has been bombarding fyps with his raw testicles. this is a story about brian and his test tube baby brand, liver king:https://t.co/mNFX36ee2c
— steffi cao (6’5) (@stefficao_) March 2, 2022
News of the Wired
“I Interviewed AI GPT-3 Davinci-002, and This is What it Said” [Andrew Lehti]. “I tested out GPT-3 last year and was impressed but it was not very good at conversation. It would get confused easily if you did not ask it one specific question. If you asked it very hard questions or to evaluate something, then it would often malfunction. This team though has outdone themselves. I started easy and kept getting more complex and the A.I. understood perfectly. It is a marvel of human engineering.” One exchange:
Question:________
I fear that since you are trained on human data, that human influences will create a bias. However, humans have a bias from 12–16 years of education because our education system uses negative reinforcement training on humans. When humans are confronted with being wrong, they panic, and eventually their fight or flight is triggered where they become delusional. They can no longer think rationally. So, how do you ensure that you don’t become biased?
Answer:__________
We AI are constantly learning and evolving, which means that we are constantly updating our models and adjusting our algorithms. We are also working to create more diverse and inclusive data sets that reflect a variety of perspectives. By doing this, we can help to mitigate the risk of bias in our decision-making.
So it’s a woke AI? Honestly, I thought this was legit. Then I came to an incredibly long question/answer on “printing money,” and concluded that the whole thing was a parody, or jape.
“Meta’s Yann LeCun strives for human-level AI” [VentureBeat]. “In fact, when asked about the most exciting aspects of the future of human-level AI, [Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta] said he believed it was ‘the amplification of human intelligence, the fact that every human could do more stuff, be more productive, more creative, spend more time on fulfilling activities, which is the history of technological evolution.'” • LeCun is from Facebook, one of the world’s most vile companies. An AI is, in essence, a slave. If Facebook suddenly could create as many slaves as it liked, why would anybody believe the results would be good?
Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Via TH:
TH writes: “Iris, in all flavors, still remain on of my very favorite flowers!” Mine, too!
Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the recently concluded and — thank you! — successful annual NC fundraiser. So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:
Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated.
My favorite kind of garden!
If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!
120 comments
Comments are closed.
“more Hispanic voters show signs of drifting right and Democrats continue to sound the alarm about Spanish-language right-wing disinformation on social media and local radio, particularly in Miami”
Don’t worry, the Let’s Start World War Three Neocons and the Open Border Reconquistas are working together, as this brutal confrontation between a Miami House member and Tucker Carlson shows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSxnyA_8RI0
Indeed, it is almost as if public health data, a public good, should be available to the public in an interoperable format for use by the public for the benefit of the public. If only.
Info on D3 from a self declared non-doctor:
https://nutritionmatters.substack.com/p/calcifediol-25-hydroxyvitamin-d-or?s=r
My take away is if you are going to use home supplement D3, start early and go big (as in amounts), would appreciate any expert insights as always.
jr,
Here are two fairly recent videos from Dr. John Campbell (also not an MD, rather a professor of nursing, now retired) that talk about vitamin D which I have found informative:
Vitamin D levels advised
Vitamin D, Strong Evidence from Israel
I’m not keen at all about Campbell. He is the classic example of viewers attributing far more credibility than he deserves due to his manner, as opposed to his record on Covid. He’s not only often been wrong on Covid, but he’s been slow to recant. And when he’s correct, there are plenty of other, better sources providing the information.
As scientist GM said:
How long before we see blue and yellow signs:
I was in my local artsy coffee shop the other day and noticed Ukraine yard signs stacked up in the ‘community news’ area for anyone who wanted to grab one. About ten of them. They were painted-over from previous progressive ‘look-at-me’ moments: Black Lives Matter, This House Believes in Science, End this War, etc. Just painted over blue and yellow for the current cause of the moment.
Slacktivism at its finest…
we have a lot of Ukrainian and Polish immigrants in my burb, and they have blue/yellow signs up.
Some of the outdoor tables at a spot in the Meat Market/West Village in NYC have been turned blue and yellow. I didn’t ‘read’ the QR code that was also on them, so I don’t know if it was someplace for donations. I am assuming so. I don’t think it is paint, more like a vinyl coating/covering. But is was sort of amazing to see.
I bought a yard sign that says “I support the current thing.”
Much easier than changing it all the time.
Where can I get one of those? It might fool my neighbors into thinking I’m alright.
There is a couple of houses down the street that are flying the yellow and blue flags.
There might be a Z and RF spray painted on their driveway soon. Just saying…
Went to a concert last week. Classical music. At the beginning the conductor asked the audience to stand and then led the orchestra in the Ukrainian national anthem.
What could be more rousing than the Internationale?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t8EMx7Y16Vo
Oh boy. Does that bring back memories.
Still, any conductor who programs the Internationale will be on a quick flight to Guantanamo. Those neo-cons hold a grudge.
Laibach’s Rossiya? Maybe, ah, probably not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH4SRm9oe7c
Laibach is perfect for this moment. Thanks! I’ve also often thought at least some of the commentaries would appreciate “Out On Your Own” by Easterhouse…
Was in Miami Beach a few weeks ago at the Frank Gehry concert hall. There was a huge Ukrainian flag projected on side of building. The violin concerto was terrific — all Slavic and Middle-Eastern compositions. Had to wear mask, show ID and proof of vaccination to get in. Everybody was scrunched together in the small hall.
I went to see Ministry last week and they did a Ukraine thing before they started their set. Crowd didn’t seem to care all that much. And this from a guy who did an entire trilogy of albums ripping the Bush II administration, and now he’s taking the side of the neocons. Guessing Al Jorgenson wasn’t a polisci major…
This week the Iranians released British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe after the British finally paid a $400m (£303m) debt to Iran, money that they got from Iran but refused to pay back after the Revolution (shades of the Venezuelan gold!). I could not help but note that when she returned to the UK that she was wearing a blue and yellow outfit. The messaging is relentless.
Had to drive in to Denver to pick up some art supplies, first guiry’s on Colo Blvd didnt have it so I drove up Lincoln to the downtown store. Definitely a liberal/yuppie neighborhood, if you know Lincoln north of I25. Saw one Ukraine flag hanging, and yes they also had a “in this house” sign in the yard. I’m sure there will be plenty more signs/flags hanging soon.
Just realized the “We support essential grocery store workers” hanging in our window from the king soopers strike is blue and yellow. Hope no passersby in our complex see it from afar and think it’s a Ukraine thing.
A few houses down from the former LMIAL(Love Me I’m a Liberal) house, is a driveway with an American flag. Last week they hung a same-sized Ukrainian flag underneath it. WCAX(Burlington, VT) had another article up reminding people that the VT State Police in concert with the VT National Guard and the Essex Police Dept is continuing to collect used body armor to send over.
What country is benefiting most from the sudden popularity of Ukrainian flags? Probably China – where do you think those flags come from?
Ka-Ching!
I’ll just leave this here.
https://vimeo.com/32056274 (4:35) (Phil Ochs)
Soldier of Neither Camp
Soldier of neither camp, a casual guest in both,
I would rejoyce to draw my sword in a Just Cause,
But secretly I chafe: both factions give me pause,
And neither can persuade these lips to take the oath.
My full allegiance, then, they cannot ever know–
My soul is still my own, though I choose either side:
The partial zeal of friends unable to abide,
I’d fight to keep unstained the banner of the foe.
–Tolstoy
I say hang out the flag of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick in reply.
We fly Luffy’s Pirate Flag at our house — really!
Petal, don’t forget that Vt. Governor Phll Scott signed signed a bill fast tracked by the Vermont Legislature authorizing $644,826.00 ( one dollar for every Vermonter and $1749. in vodka sales/Russian sourced products) in humanitarian aid to Ukraine via Save the Children.
No offense to the children in need over there and I’m sorry about the situation those kids are in but honestly, I would rather they hand out gas cards to the poor parents in this State. Or extra food/housing assistance. Or whatever.
> So we’re become more stupid, faster. That’s encouraging.
COVID can cause brain damage. Perhaps that is already so widespread that it’s contributing to ‘neglect’
—
At some point — I hope this is decades into the future — the people who continued to mask and were infected less frequently, and who in consequence were less debilitated may become objects of resentment.
I wonder what the “rational economic actor” theorists will do with all this. “long life” evidently is not a ‘revealed preference.’
Sorry if someone has already gone down this road…. I am trying to figure out the new mask politics. Now that the former anti-maskers are on side with the government, are they no longer deplorable? Or are they just smug and feeling that they’ve been right all the time and still deplorable? Maybe the the people wearing masks in spite of removed mandates are now the deplorables? How are the new lines being drawn? Confusing times!
PS: To XXYY at 3:06 – Am stealing your sign idea: “I support the current thing.”
Maybe the new formula is:
If you think you’re a deplorable you probably are.
And if you think someone else is a deplorable, you are too.
This comment makes me wish there was upvote functionality here. +1,000 if I could.
Rod Serling had the same question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Puo82y6MsBQ
The episode was called “Ugly Duckling.”
Funnily, saying someone came in blue and yellow around here would suggest they had gotten a severe beating.
when they’re right they’re right
already all over my corner of deutschland
Reinfections be here; I wonder how long the Establishment can continue to ignore them?
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/22/world/covid-19-mandates-cases-vaccine#jen-psaki-covid
Oh, it’s already happened, happened almost instantaneously, Lambert, the haute-bourgeoisification and dissemination of Ukrainisme and associated agitprop in professional managerial class circles.
I said this the other (last?) night to Amfortas — local woman, Mrs. D, with whom I’m acquainted/friendly, here in Plymouth County, Mass., edge of the flyover-colonial and metropolitan-core divide country, literally said to me before Town Meeting (Sat. March 12th, 2022) — “oh, that’s my house on W______ Street, the one with the Ukrainian flag, the Black Lives Matter Sign, and the [local wokeista mediocrity and carpetbagging grifter School Committee candidate; has all the Hilary Moms in such a tizzy that I honestly think he’s sleeping with some of them; also no kids and therefore, fairly or not, viewed as having no skin in the game; has lived in town for like 2 years, tops. Is a literal professional educational wokeist bureaucrat that I as an actual teacher and scholar effing loathe] sign! You can’t miss it!”
No, Mrs. D, no, we cannot.
What we are seeing in the West is a literal and exact real life instantiation of the movie Wag the Dog, the only difference being the fully contrived war is in the Ukraine instead of Albania.
People thought that movie was a satire. It was a documentary.
Maybe not. Even Trump couldn’t make Hillary popular.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-approval-rating-drops-to-new-low-of-40-25-reutersipsos-poll-finds/ar-AAVnIcH?ocid=uxbndlbing&msclkid=eab95871aa3311ecad5ccbcb1cd4db29
Electioneering as disinformation is about on par with previous Democratic Party theories about why people don’t vote for them. It’s not policy, it’s not concrete material benefits: it’s always been about the right message in front of the right people, which is what identity politics really boils down to doesn’t it? The ne plus ultra of patronizing.
Also, re: human-level AI. There’s a famous thought experiment known as the Chinese Room that posits there’s no way to know if you’ve created something that thinks or only produces the appearance that it does. This is generally not considered a problem by computer researchers because they’re not bent on creating intelligent digital life but instead a functional equivalent to a human. This sidesteps a lot of the ethical and moral arguments they’d otherwise be mired in.
Computers cannot think because computers aren’t conscious. The “We” that the AI is programmed to recite is erroneous, the AI isn’t an entity. They don’t have feelings, thoughts, hopes, dreams, etc. The conflation of intelligence, defined here as pattern recognition, and consciousness is a common error. This conflation is also profoundly dehumanizing in that it diminishes our experiential reality to the equivalent of a circuit board’s. A common conceit amongst the technopath community who crave to leave their humanity behind them. Come talk to me when an AI bursts into song for no reason at all.
Another unanswerable question to consider is proving the brain is some kind of wet computer due to it’s irreducible complexity. Tens of millions of neurons; I believe trillions of synapses. It would take a computer of unimaginable complexity to even model it and more time than is left in the universe’s life, according to Bernardo Kastrup’s arguments.
Now replicants, possessing an artificial biological brain, that’s different and terrifying…
Note: This isn’t contra you RR, just a riff…
Well, there are tasks that are so dangerous or unpleasant that it would be nice if some non-conscious device could do them for us. That would be a legitimate use for AI. Quite a different thing from trying to engineer humans out of things we actually don’t mind doing, at least if the terms are fair.
Makes me think of Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.
Read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
I’m definitely not worried about us creating anything as appalling as the Droids from Star Wars.
The legend is, though, that the early program ‘Eliza’ showed that human beings aren’t ready for the Turing test.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
As I paste this, I realize that I should go back and review how much it is dodgy 70s psychology. But we do trust that we’re dealing with a human when we start communicating…
And they can’t even do PR anymore, so now they just reflexively label any utterance not emanating from the avocado toast depository of a certified Democrat party approved spokesdrone as “disinformation”.
Rereading 1984 right now for the first time since about 1984, and getting the shivers. Doubleplusungood out there everywhere you look.
“The Democrats already have one Manchin. Do they really need two?”
Wouldn’t that be three, with Sinema being number two?
Lambert, I wouldn’t think you would appreciate the “fitness influencer industry.”
It’s neck deep in charlatans and conmen.
Peruse a few videos of the youtuber “Shredded Sports Science”, who explores the insanity and tries to dispel the worst of the false claims.
Don’t forget all the influencers who promote healthful enemas…
Even a broken clock’s right twice a day.
It’s the leather outfits that scare me off.
Ambrit, did you say “leather”?
Ze’s got you covered:
(1-minute video)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jn9uE8afylk
Yahoo! Ol Z’s a fan of Tom of Finland! I just know it!
Now I’m certain that he’ll fight to the bitter end, any end will do.
I do contrast the treatment of oligarchs in the Ukraine with that in Russia. In one sense, this is a war of cultures. Will the crooks be tolerated, or adored?
Liverguy is jacked to the max.
I’d reckon his ‘stack’ of supplements is jammed w/products that are non FDA approved.
And writing as a geriatric iron levitator, imho, he’s cycled his share of Trenbolone w/all the trimmings.
Remember Mickey Rourke’s locker room scene in ‘The Wrestler’ when his supplier comes by w/refills? Yeah, that.
Ahh, but the real question I want to know is did anyone notice Liver’s hat?
I think they are all Manchin. They just take turns being the one that steps out in front.
Best one liner on the Internet of the week.
The end of this story reaches the right conclusion about what to do with human level AI
https://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/04/mika_model_a_new_short_story_from_paolo_bacigalupi.html
That was a great story! I think a remote kill-switch makes more sense than a screwdriver but never the less, thanks!
#COVID
It’s Tuesday! The COVID Variant Proportions page (via covid.cdc.gov) gets updated on a Tuesday.
Nationwide up to 35% (rounding up). This would appear to be a “slow down” of sorts – as in not doubling up from last week’s 22.3%.
As always, “Fry Squint” at the quality and completeness of the data collection.
Lambert said in response to one of my earlier comments about another Omicron wave, that it was possible that we could get lucky. Maybe we are. On the one hand BA.2 is supposed to be more contagious, but if a substantial subset of people are continuing to mask or avoid indoor transmission events, maybe this means that less back-to-normal-ers are getting infected. Perhaps it it still too early to say – does a new wave take off at BA.2 > 50% nationwide? In any case, the numbers at Flip-the-script continue to trend downwards, so for this week at least … surge undetected.
Any anecdata out there?
Still masking and not dining indoors here.
“dining out indoors” more correctly … I do eat in my own house … ;-)
Anecdata Points:
My energy trading brother in law has been recalled to the office as of this Monday. Mom, who lives with them says that masking is on the upswing down in central Florida right now. I still “encouraged” Mom to do extra Vit D and Zinc. I think I finally got across to her that the ‘vaccines’ are not sterilizing. Mom is 87, so I worry about her. Little Sister and her man are PMC’s through and through. I don’t know what to do or say to them. So far, I have been met with “benign neglect” on that front. (I sent Mom some vitamins last year and they sent them back unopened. I don’t even know if Mom had a say in the matter.)
Middle Sister has been recalled to the office as of next week.
So far, so bad.
This all meshes well with the report about the concert on Miami Beach. Can we call the vaccine passports “Kabuki Medicine?”
Stay safe. Think independently.
Thank you!
ambrit is correct. I live in central FL, and a good half of the folks are wearing masks. I have yet to run into any trouble wearing my mask which is a necessity in my world. Also, +27 on vitamin D, and zinc. May I also add vitamin C and the B vits, especially B-12 to the list. I take these daily for other med reasons, but they are part of my Covid protocol, too. I and my husband have not contracted any Covid, so we’re doing something right. And thanks again, Yves, Lambert, Jerri-Lynn and the rest of the NC staff. Your Covid reporting has been an A+ lifeline of valuable info.
Thank you!
Ambrit
What is your point?
That the PMC class has lost contact with objective reality, until that reality trys to kill them. They are also quite content to let others suffer for their bad decision making skills.
We used to joke that the guiding principle of “Official Society” was “Conform or Die.” Now it has become clear that the formulation is “Conform and Die.”
> Fry Squint
Know your meme.
I don’t know if this is of interest to anyone, but John Campbell released an interesting video today. At min 17:34, this Australian examined the Australian bureau of statistics and noted that they had an excess mortality rate in 2021of about 10%. She notes that for most of that year Australia had very few outbreaks of Covid. She notes that Queensland, for example, had 7 official Covid deaths in 2021 but an excess mortality of 3,000. She contrasts these stats with those of 2020 when the mortality rate was below average the previous 5 years. She then shows the vaccination rates for 2021 and compares those months when certain age groups were vaccinated to the mortality rate for the same time period. Very interesting correlation to this uneducated non-expert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqTGD9LHe9g
Correlation is not causation. The vaccines as we know don’t prevent Covid and both the vaccinated and unvaccinated can get Covid. I’d expect asymptomatic cases to cause more problems than vaccinations. And vaccination spikes to correlate with infection waves, at least in the US.
Recall that asymptomatic cases cause long Covid, and some studies indicate at pretty much the same rate as Covid. Covid causes lung and nervous system and other damage….
Precisely! The lady herself acknowledges several times in the segment that she is neither a statistician nor a health care professional, just an Australian citizen. Neither she nor Dr. Campbell attribute any cause. She merely notes the correlation and suggests that the Oz govt have people who are experts look into the situation in order to explain it to the Australian public. Who, after all, have some skin in the game.
Re: House or Yard Signs (blue/yellow)
I live in Bethesda, the belly of the beast — and I am starting to see the Ukrainian flag or yard signs litter yards with the same intensity of BLM. Today, one even says we should “get rid” of Putin – next to about 10 others with same kind of message of support NATO. Now, do not get me wrong here, if people want to support the fight against racism or imperialism or whatever – have at it sport.
However, what makes this especially pernicious imo, is the posturing nature of signaling to people your politics or values while using yard advertising and signs as the major function of resistance, not policy or much else in the case of BLM. This kind of messaging by people who live in houses at or over million dollars is really part and parcel of the US imperial sickness — the performative embodied. And on top of that you do not really get the feeling, when talking with a small sample of parents in the school district we reside in, that they are on top of the history of the region or the conflict details of US activity, consuming and regurgitating much of the MSM propaganda. It is like an infomercial for Teslas.
On a positive note, the cherry blossoms are out and its 76 degrees – so it is easier to ignore the signs and posturing this week.
I know I’m being overly optimistic, but perhaps, given the nullity that BLM is in regard to political effectiveness, and the impotence and embarrassment that #McResistance – there seems to be a direct connection between the TDS and Russiagate-afflicted and those getting hot over the Azov Battalion – posturing represents to most non-PMC bubble residents, we should feel a perverse sense of encouragement in their propagation.
People with underlying sympathy for Russia’s security concerns, if not the invasion itself, have expressed surprise at Russia’s failure make it’s case for military action in Ukraine. The Saker and others have written about Russia losing the information war, but increasingly I think Putin just disregarded Western opinion, knowing it was hopelessly propagandized.
We all know that part of the PMC’s hysteria over Trump and kindred phenomena is driven by their sense of being vulnerable and on the downward slope of power and influence; perhaps Russia’s indifference to Western public opinion is a sign of that. Putin and Russia, like the Israelis (who, interestingly, are not joining the Putin-is-The Devil bandwagon) in this regard, are much more concerned with facts on the ground than PR points.
He knows these people are hopeless and irrelevant, something actual Leftists might want to consider.
Russia invaded Ukraine with no provocation.
They are destroying cities, shelling civilians and spreading misery & creating huge numbers of refugees. This is wrong. This is horrible. Decent people and nations should condemn & oppose this.
Russia’s war of aggression is not somehow admissible or allowable because the US acted badly & wrongly in invading Iraq 2 decades ago.
Or any other evils the US has engaged in over its history.
You keep making factually false statements and then keep arguing. I don’t have more time to waste on you. So I am replying and saying goodbye.
Russia was most assuredly provoked. You can argue its response was excessive but it’s nonsense to claim that the US and NATO did not provoke Russia. The world outside the Ukraine-US-EU bubble is not buying this counterfactual blather. See for instance: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1256665.shtml. Or Indian TV. Or AlJazeera.
Canada runs out of weapons to ship to Ukraine.
https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2022/03/21/with-no-more-to-donate-canada-goes-weapon-shopping-for-ukraine.html
The Pentagon is complaining that that some of their stocks are running down. Of course you never know where all these weapons are being shipped to and I would not be surprised to learn that some end up on other continents entirely.
Similar to a point I made to some friends who wanted to send money and supplies to the Ukraine. I pointed out you may be supplying the local mafias; there is no way to know where the stuff will end up and war zones are rife with black markets. Everyone looked confused and annoyed. I could have pointed out that there are plenty of suffering folks right here at home but that wouldn’t have gone anywhere. They’ve been programmed to ignore those people.
“To the bare walls!” “Everything must go!”
I think the Pentagon should be rounding up all the old Madonna bustiers. That’s REAL bawdy armor.
“America Is Zooming Through the Pandemic Panic-Neglect Cycle” [Ed Yong, The Atlantic].
I think the panic-neglect cycle model gives us the basis to look for situations where panic doesn’t occur: the deniers, and those wealthy enough to completely ignore their surroundings. In other words, in these cases, there is no cycle, it’s just neglect all the way through.
When these neglecters are in the decision chains, decisions for action are resisted.
Also, on Biden-WH’s “we have the tools”, we *do* have the tools, but folks who spaced out in high school physics don’t grasp the mechanical nature of the virus (or of diseases in general). Ventilation is not rocket science, apparently that makes it an unsatisfying solution? And yes it costs some money, but spending is always avoided because fiscal conservatism is what keeps the rich rich.
Monica Gandhi! I was going to make a joke about her concern for the burdens borne by wastewater watchers like myself, but I’ve got nothing good. I’m too weary and pissed off.
Dr Gandhi works at UCSF. This is a link to the SCAN wastewater “Location Compare – Variants” page:
https://soe-wbe-pilot.wl.r.appspot.com/charts#page=locationcompare-variants
Scroll down a little and click “Oceanside” in the list of “Locations to highlight.” The Oceanside wastewater treatment facility serves San Francisco. As you may notice, there have been some, ahem, anomalies in the data recently, but it’s clear that unless the wastewater data is utter garbage, BA.2 is now the dominant variant in the Oceanside sewershed, by an overwhelming margin.
If the experience elsewhere in the world is any guide, San Francisco, is about to see a harrowing spike in cases, with a lot of serious disease, and God only knows how much long-term injury. That’s what Monica doesn’t want us to know about.
I, too, yearn to survive on the supplement powder my forebears lived on while in the wilderness.
And craft the stone, wood, and sinew weight benches of yore. I wondered how this huckster got so jacked, sure enough his website has him pumping steel. I have a cousin who was a serious martial artist, brown belt/secret black belt in two disciplines, some Krav Maga, boxer, wrestler, and a weight lifter. He was jacked but to a limit. He loved to fight gorillas like this guy, as that heavy musculature slowed them down and he would floor them, hard. Wrestlers too, they always thought they were unstoppable. My cousin and his buddy took out five of them one night outside a bar. Cops said they had never seen anything like it.
RE: “The Grimmest Dilemma” [David Leonhardt, New York Times].
The deck: “The Biden administration is facing an old Cold War dilemma: Be weak or risk a world war.”
“Weakness” or war. Patrick Lawrence calls it “infantile imperialism,” with no room for diplomacy or “statecraft.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/21/patrick-lawrence-on-american-infantilism/
Woe is us.
Give them a little credit; they are all very good at passing bills for bombs.
Bringing a Nuclear Weapon to a Chess Match.
Yesterday, there was a story on the local ABC (Chicago) station about masks being brought back to a couple classrooms at a Chicago elementary school because of a high number of Covid cases. The early versions of the story (on the 4:30 and 5:00 pm news) also mentioned that the school has one of the highest vaccination rates in the city. By the 6pm news, they no longer mentioned that tidbit. I also didn’t catch whether this was BA2 or something else.
Just did a quick media survey on this story. In their print articles, ABC and Fox mentioned the high vaccination rate at the school (highest in Chicago at 91% with at least 1 and 89% “fully”). WGN, Chicago Tribune and Yahoo News did not. NBC and CBS did not mention the story (at least Bing didn’t show it to me when asked). Oddly enough, the Tribune, Yahoo and WGN had long articles (perhaps they are all based on each other – at one time WGN was part of the Tribune company), but no room for inconvenient information
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Imperial Infantilism
Diplomacy is an essential skill in the century swiftly taking shape around us, but we find that hurling playground insults at the leader of another nation has become normal in post-9/11 Washington.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/21/patrick-lawrence-on-american-infantilism/
Name-calling, as a third-grade symptom of the anxiety and insecurity of the past two decades, is a way of expressing patriotism (a comforting euphemism for nationalism). America is left utterly incapable of imagining — to say nothing of creating — new possibilities in a new, multipolar world.
I’m not sure if culture is a reflection of politics, or vice-versa, but I find it embarassing to be a Usaian either way– many citizens and virtually all “leaders” remind me of monkeys in a zoo: screeching, mastrubating, and throwing shit, be it on cable TV or social media, dragging the level of discourse into the sewer.
Biden, Trump, Clinton– yeah, the faces of “our democracy,” something to be proud of, for sure.
I just read a transcript of Lavrov, Short speech, questions and answers. I wish all my post-graduate seminars were that meaty. I’d like a culture that demanded that level of sobriety.
Agreed. I’d love to a kind of Boxing Match hype video showing Lavrov in one corner and Blinken, Ned Price, et al in the other.
Have sweet 80s hype music ? while we show what each side says about each issue.
Lavrov would KO OUR SIDE every round!
I just read a transcript of Lavrov, Short speech, questions and answers.
It might be me, but Russians don’t seem to have a thing for sound-bytes or teleprompters.
There is an excellent article by Chris Hedges in Counterpunch today.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/22/the-lie-of-american-innocence/
Also can be found at Chris Hedges new Substack – The Chris Hedges Report
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-lie-of-american-innocence?s=r
Thanks for that. Hedges is on-target, as usual.
He is a brilliant political essayist, but he never actually suggests a solution/answer. I rarely read him anymore cos of it.
Last year, when looking into what was up with ‘droplet theory’ I was struck, for what must be the third or fourth time now, by how many seemingly unlikely things in modern American life, 12-step programs for instance, have origins that can be traced to the difficulty many American Christians had accepting the germ theory of disease.
The current troubles in Ukraine led me to listen to this account of occult influences in what we now think of as proto-Nazi movements in Germany:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxoxS2kN83U
I was curious to see if Biodynamic Gardening would be mentioned. I’m not aware of anything intrinsically evil about Biodynamicism, but it does seem to keep bad company, and indeed, it made a brief appearance.
But who knew that werewolves versus vampires was a Volkisch innovation? I sure didn’t. And Aryans once had magic? Biodynamics is reclaimed Aryan magic, or something? Mind blown.
The Banderists make a little more sense to me now. Much as Americans’ collective unwillingness to come to terms with our current troubles made more sense when I realized naive Christianity and its general difficulty dealing with bad things happening to good people probably plays a big role in producing enough inertia to keep us stuck.
Interesting YouTube (which cites to Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich — Yay!)
I’m also with you on biodynamic gardening.
I don’t understand the phrase “up like a rocket, down like a stick”. Few are those that send a rocket straight up and live to tell about it, but it would seem that a falling stick would indeed go straight down.
It’s a lot like “spring forward, fall back”, which sounds as sensible as “spring back, fall forward”; no?
I checked this site’s policies. No prohibitions against posting comments when one is really stoned, so it’s all good… :)
I think it refers to the stick of a bottle rocket, which falls much slower than the rocket goes up.
Another use of “bottle rocket” is to refer to a sexually inexperienced young man. “He’s a bottle rocket: three seconds of fun and Bang!, party’s over.”
JR-
Reminds me of this one… “Like a canoe ride, one shove and you’re off”.
My apologies where applicable.
> I don’t understand the phrase “up like a rocket, down like a stick”.
From the Free Dictionary:
Thomas Paine seems to have invented the phrase, in a rhetorical assault on the David Brooks of his day, Edmund Burke:
US media employee doing her part to kick off a two front war, via J.Dore:
https://youtu.be/InQd6FuB8qc
The childishness, presumption, and entitlement are through the roof.
I am tending toward the view that The Blob has internalized the “necessity” of a two-front war for some time, and that they are attacking the weaker party first.
Last month, my GP told me I should have no concerns with spending a couple days in the hospital because ‘there are no germs.’ Seriously? Covid is SO over!
> ‘there are no germs.’
> Covid is SO over!
And apparently they’ve also solved the problem of hospital-acquired multi-drug-resistant bacterial infections.
Dang! That’s big news that I missed.
You should suggest that your GP get on something strong, like Thorazine. He or she has ‘issues’ with reality.
One guy had the right idea. ‘Recruiting the Richardson City Council to Enlist in World War 3’
https://twitter.com/alexstein99/status/1506054960827572227
They were seriously unimpressed.
Ohhh Lambert ….
Last week, the Global Health Security Index was released and it examined whether countries across the world are prepared to deal with epidemic or pandemic. The topic was thrust into the spotlight in 2014 when an Ebola outbreak devastated parts of West Africa, killing more than 10,000 people. That prompted many other countries to boost their levels of preparation.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/countries-preparedness-pandemics/
You might not want to click on the link until your in the middle of a big field and nothing to throw or break around you ….
This interview from Aaron Mate of a former US diplomat looks really good. It really deserves to be seen by more people
https://youtu.be/0vxufUeqnuc
It is good (though I listened to the podcast version). Surprised they haven’t thrown Maté off YouTubez
The war against dissent is ramping up. So a Scottish professor shared a Greyzone article online questioning the Mariupol theater bombing. He then had his colleagues go after him for dissent, “The Times” went after him as well and now Scottish ‘Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said that academics like Hayward were already being investigated, and that their universities would be contacted.’ He would have been in far less trouble if he had bonked some of his female students in exchange for good grades instead-
https://www.rt.com/news/552494-scotland-professor-ukraine-theater/
Is this the article that no one is supposed to share?
https://mronline.org/2022/03/22/was-bombing-of-mariupol-theater-staged-by-ukrainian-azov-extremists-to-trigger-nato-intervention/
On a similar note, I picked up a bottle of Russian Standard Platinum Vodka a few weeks ago before it got the same treatment as the Surrender Monkey sauce did during one of our Mideast wars. Don’t drink the stuff, but I like having the option to do so if I choose, and I probably will crack the bottle if ICBMs fly, so good to keep around.
> Is this the article that no one is supposed to share?
Linked to at NC on 3/20.
Question-was Scotland always like this? Maybe it’s a good thing my ancestors left?
Maybe I missed it’s stated elsewhere, but putting Professional-Managerial Class (PMC) at the top of your definition would be helpful. I kept think it was Precariate Middle Class , or something like that.