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2:00PM Water Cooler 2/3/2023

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Plain-tailed Warbling Finch, Huascarán–Laguna Llanganuco, Ancash, Peru. “From a bird in patchy elfin forest near treeline. While singing this bird was moving between the tallest bushes around and sitting near the top.”

“New research turns what we know about bird window strikes inside-out” [William & Mary College]. “New research from William & Mary published in PeerJ Life & Environment reveals that decals intended to reduce incidents of bird window strikes—one of the largest human-made causes of bird mortality— are only effective if decals are placed on the outside of the window. Researchers found that the patterns on the films and decals placed on the internal surface of windows do not reduce collision because they may not be sufficiently visible to birds.”

* * *

Politics

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

“Here’s food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels.” –Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

Biden Administration

Copy editors rule:

2024

“Buttigieg, two years into Biden’s Cabinet, ‘not planning on going anywhere'” [Politico]. • Well, he got right. He’s not going anywhere.

“Hunter Biden Claims His Laptop” [Wall Street Journal]. “Hunter Biden did some reckless things, is unhappy people found out, and so is now doing something equally reckless. Oh, and by the way, that laptop really is his. That’s the news out of a batch of letters sent this week by Hunter’s attorneys. They are demanding federal and state prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service launch investigations into those involved with distributing the contents of ‘Mr. Biden’s files’ from his infamous laptop. The Washington Post amusingly framed this as a Hunter-gets-“aggressive”-with-his-critics story, relegating the real news to the 20th paragraph: ‘In filing the complaint, however, Biden’s lawyers seem to be conceding that some of the data that has been made public is his private information.’ Oh? The complaints are in fact an extraordinary admission that Hunter—and his father, President Joe Biden—have misled the country for years.”

“2024 House Race Ratings: Another Competitive Fight for Control” (paywalled) [Cook Political Report]. “House Republicans enter the 2024 cycle with an infamously thin 222-213 majority and lots of questions about why they didn’t perform better in 2022. But they have history on their side: despite the House flipping partisan control five times since 1994, it hasn’t flipped in a presidential cycle since 1952 and hasn’t flipped to the party occupying the White House since 1948, when Harry Truman barnstormed against a Republican ‘do nothing Congress.’ Still, with 18 Republicans sitting in districts carried by President Biden in 2020 and just five Democrats sitting in districts carried by Donald Trump, there are more than enough vulnerable GOP seats on the table to keep the House in play for Democrats. The most recent precedents for this cycle might be 1996 and 2012, when Presidents Clinton and Obama faced voters two years after the GOP retook the House. Despite a government shutdown in 1995 and a debt ceiling showdown in 2011, voters opted to preserve a divided government — with slightly reduced GOP House majorities.”

“Do Americans have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump?” [FiveThirtyEight]. -15.8%. But then, have you seen the other guys?

Democrats en Déshabillé

Patient readers, it seems that people are actually reading the back-dated post! But I have not updated it, and there are many updates. So I will have to do that. –lambert

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.

* * *

Oh noes!

This time I thought I’d count the times the words “member” or “membership” is used. I got twelve. Did I miss any? Direct mail mavens: Isn’t this a little excessive? Even a little desperate? Who exactly do they hope to persuade? Somebody quite elderly and vulnerable?

How did I miss this:

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Why they condemned socialism” [Carl Beijer]. “The reason our ruling class singles out socialism for condemnation is that they are specifically afraid of the socialist agenda. They aren’t worried about ‘progressives’ because they know that’s code for ‘liberals and socialists who won’t make socialism a priority.’ They aren’t worried about ‘populists’ because they know that’s code for ‘edgy centrists who want standard centrist reforms.’ But socialism terrifies the ruling class, because try as they have to redefine it, they still haven’t dissociated it from its core agenda. Socialists want nationalization, socialists want worker control of the means of production, socialists want the abolition of private property, socialists want the decommodification of necessities, and these are all things that the ruling class absolutely does not want. Make vague demands about ‘structural change’ or ‘draining the swamp’ and they can work with it; hell, most of our politicians run for office with slogans like this. But make the specific demands that socialists make and all they can say is ‘hell no.'” • And of course:

More on the emergence and defenestration of “the public” (I believe I butchered this thread yesterday, so here it is again.)

And:

Mass infection without mitigation is bipartisan:

Each to the other: “We couldn’t have done it without you!”

“Rethinking COVID hegemony” [Croakey Health Media]. I’m going to quote this fine summary first:

Our governments and mainstream media have persuaded Australians [and the Anglosphere] to accept increasing morbidity, mortality, and the erosion of our public health systems using four key strategies. First, by adopting and promoting myths about the virus which downplay its severity – “it’s mild”, “it’s just like the flu”, “we’re all going to get COVID” and, more recently, “the pandemic is over”. As such, we perceive the pandemic as less risky and any protective measure as an overreaction. Second, by suppressing COVID-related statistics and other information, as for example with deliberate under-testing of suspected cases, the move from daily to weekly announcements of cases and deaths or, as the ABC’s Casey Briggs recently identified, by suppressing government-commissioned COVID research, forecasts, and modelling. Third, by adapting pre-existing beliefs or public opinion, such as using the idea of “pandemic fatigue” to remove mandated protections. And lastly, by prioritising a hyper-individualistic discourse over a collective approach that champions shared responsibility, as for example with the mantra of “personal responsibility” and the neoliberal ideals of rugged individualism and small government on which this depends, shifting blame from the state to the citizen.

Lots of good ways to shift the framing… If they are ever adopted by the powers-that-be, who are doing very well, thank you.

#COVID19

Lambert here: I am but a humble tapewatcher, but unlike Eric Topol, I’m not calling a surge, because the last peak was Biden’s Omicron debacle, and after an Everest like that, what’s left? Topol’s view is the establishment view: Hospital-centric. Mine is infection-centric. I do not see the universal acceleration or doubling in cases that I would expect to see based on past surges.

I am calling a “Something Awful.” It’s gonna be bad, in some new way, and we don’t know how, yet (but see here for immune system dysregulation, which is looking pretty awful).

Lambert here: Looks like “leveling off to a high plateau” across the board. Stay safe out there!

* * *

• I’m lovin’ it:

* * *

• Covid goals:

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, every day would be Christmas. If Osterholm’s mother had wheels, she’d be a teacart. Covid doesn’t care about Osterholm’s goals ffs! (Oh, and protective custody for “protecting older populations” is a euphemism for doing nothing about shared air. Which schoolchildren breathe. And the immunocompromised, regardless of age. I’ve always thought of Osterholm as one of the better ones — at least he isn’t recommending death at 75, like Emanuel — but here he seems to have completely lost his mind. On Meet the Press.

* * *

• Elites protect themselves. They don’t want to protect you, and they don’t want you to protect yourself either:

See also Davos and Newton, MA.

* * *

• From Florence Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing:

The IC/ID goons seem to have brain-wiped themselves on the importance of ventilation….

• “Enjoy Clean Air While You Drive with the Mini-Mini Box” [Jim Rosenthal, Tex-Air Filters]. “The air you breathe in your car or truck is potentially some of the worst you will encounter on a daily basis. The relatively small cabin volume and proximity of the driver and other passengers make for one of the highest risk environments for the transmission of an airborne disease. Opening windows is always a great option, but there are times when that is not possible. Plus you bring in lots of allergens and other airborne particles. There is a simple, low-cost solution – Mini-Mini Corsi-Rosenthal Box. For $40 to $50 and 15 minutes of your time you can dramatically lower those potentially dangerous indoor particles.” • Rosenthal’s tweet was just two days ago. And here are directions!

* * *

• Maskstravaganza: “I’m a doctor and I don’t like wearing masks at work. Does that make me selfish?” [Guardian]. No. It makes you dangerous. “As a frontline healthcare worker, I am against the ongoing requirement for mask-wearing in all clinical areas, for the simple reason that there appears to be no concept of when it will end.” • Replace “mask-wearing” with “hand-washing,” and, well, a second opinion: It makes you stupid, too.

• Maskstravaganza: “EXCLUSIVE: Unattractive people are MORE likely to keep wearing face masks in post-Covid era, study suggests” [Mail Online]. “They concluded that young and middle-aged Americans who view themselves as attractive ‘believe wearing a mask hinders the opportunities to deliver a favorable impression to others’.” • On the other hand, people who do not view themselves as attractive buy into the ‘mask attractiveness belief’ — that face coverings actually enhance their looks.” • Then again, perhaps the beautiful people — hear me out — are ugly on the inside. Also [hits Caps Lock] “MASKS ARE NOT FACE COVERINGS BECAUSE THEY DO NOT COVER THE EYES.”

• Maskstravaganza: I don’t know about this:

Of course, it’s ridiculous this guy even has to put together a kit. (I did check the Apple app store, and there seem to be mask fit apps — but only for sleep apnea masks.)

* * *

• Professionals aren’t supposed to give up. But on Covid, the (hegemonic) PMC have led the way:

* * *

* * *

Case Data

NOT UPDATED BioBot wastewater data from January 30:

For now, I’m going to use this national wastewater data as the best proxy for case data (ignoring the clinical case data portion of this chart, which in my view “goes bad” after March 2022, for reasons as yet unexplained). At least we can spot trends, and compare current levels to equivalent past levels.

Transmission

Here is CDC’s interactive map by county set to community transmission (the “red map,” which is the map CDC wants only hospitals to look at, not you.) The map is said to update Monday-Friday by 8 pm:

The previous map:

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. That the “green map” (which Topol calls a “capitulation” and a “deception”) is still up and being taken seriously verges on the criminal.

Positivity

From the Walgreen’s test positivity tracker, published February 3:

0.0%. Flat (still at a high plateau, equal to previous peaks).

Wastewater

Wastewater data (CDC), January 30:

Again, what the [family blog] is the [family blogging] use of a national wastewater map where nearly all the collection sites are [family blogging] greyed out?

January 29:

And MWRA data, January 31:

Looks to me like New England’s regional surge is winding down. No bump from the students returning. Readers?

• “The Murky Ethics of Wastewater Surveillance” [Science History Institute]. “Testing wastewater is less expensive and invasive than swabbing thousands of students’ noses and analyzing all those samples individually. It can also be done almost continuously. As of late 2020 at least five dozen colleges had set up sewage-testing programs…. Hundreds of local governments and sewer authorities also embraced testing, and the Centers for Disease Control created a National Wastewater Surveillance System to collect and publish data on COVID-19 levels across the country. The agency is now planning to expand the program to monitor influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, foodborne illnesses, monkeypox, and the infectious fungus Candida auris…. Sewage surveillance has seen unprecedented growth in a very short period. The field is undergoing a rapid transformation from a ‘fringe science,’ in the words of one researcher, to a mainstay of public health and a multibillion-dollar industry…. WBE is virtually unregulated, leaving it unclear what rights people have over their sewage and how others use it. Could landlords evict tenants whose sewer lines test positive for illicit drugs? Could companies coerce workers identified as drug users to rat out their colleagues? Wastewater analysis is a powerful tool for protecting public health. But a vocal group of scientists, legal analysts, and privacy experts warn against allowing it to quietly become ubiquitous without sufficient oversight, much as other surveillance technologies, such as facial recognition and Internet tracking, have done or threaten to do. They say it is critical that governments establish guidelines on avoiding unnecessary harms, ensuring appropriate use of data, and consulting with affected communities.” • Fair enough. As long as we’re not stupid about it.

Variants

Lambert here: It’s beyond frustrating how slow the variant data is. Does nobody in the public health establishment get a promotion for tracking variants? Are there no grants? Is there a single lab that does this work, and everybody gets the results from them? [grinds teeth, bangs head on desk]. UPDATE Yes. See NC here on Pango. Every Friday, a stately, academic pace utterly incompatible with protecting yourself against a variant exhibiting doubling behavior.

Variant data, national (Walgreens), January 23:

Lambert here: XBB overtakes BQ. CH not moving too fast, reassuring, because a Tweet in Links, January 11 from GM drew attention to it (“displays such a high relative growth advantage”) and in Water Cooler, January 18, from Nature: “CH.1.1 and CA.3.1 variants were highly resistant to both monovalent and bivalent mRNA vaccinations.”

Lambert here: Wierdly, the screen shot about has been replaced today by data from “10/7/2022.” (It’s clearly not current data; BQ.1* and XBB do not dominate.

Variant data, national (CDC), January 14 (Weighted Estimates Only*):

BQ.1* takes first place. XBB coming up fast. (For BQ.1/XBB and vaccine escape, see here.) CH.* now appears, a week after Walgreens. Here is Region 2, the Northeast:

CH.1* appears, but slightly below the national average. XBB utterly dominates, making clear that Region 2 (New England) varies greatly from the national average.

Here are all the regions, in a series of uncaptioned, legend-free and confusing pie charts:

It almost looks like, with respect to variants at least, there several pandemics, not one. The Northeast, where XBB (blue) dominates, and the other regions, with different proportions of other variants, but XBB not dominating. Odd. (Yes, I know the colors are the same as on the bar chart above. However, there are two charts, one bar, one pie, and on a laptop one cannot see both at same time. Just another example of CDC blithering at the level of the smallest detail.)

NOTE * CDC used to have a “Nowcast Off” radio button, which I used because of my bad experience with CDC models like Nowcast. CDC explains (I think) the change in the following note:

Weighted estimates (provided for all weeks except the most recent three weeks) are variant proportions that are based on empirical (observed) genomic sequencing data. These estimates are not available for the most recent weeks because of the time it takes to generate the unweighted data, including sample collection, specimen treatment, shipping, analysis, and upload into public databases.

Sublineages with weighted estimates less than 1% of all circulating variants are combined with their parent lineage. When the weighted estimate of a sublineage crosses the 1% threshold and has substitutions in the spike protein that could affect vaccine efficacy, transmission, or severity, it may be separated from its parent lineage and displayed on its own in the variant proportions data.

Nowcast estimates (provided for the most recent three weeks when the “Nowcast on” option is selected below) are model-based projections of variant proportions for the most recent weeks to enable timely public health action. CDC uses the Nowcast to forecast variant proportions before the weighted estimates are available for a given week.

Someone who can interpret The Great Runes can look at this; but I don’t have time today.

As a check, since New York is a BQ.1* hotbed, New York hospitalization, updated February 2:

Not as high as Biden’s ginormous jouissance, but still high.

Hospitalization data for Queens, updated January 29:

Deaths

Death rate (Our World in Data):

Total: 1,135,341 – 1,134,259 = 1082 (1082 * 365 = 394,930 deaths per year, today’s YouGenicist™ number for “living with” Covid (quite a bit higher than the minimizers would like, though they can talk themselves into anything. If the YouGenicist™ metric keeps chugging along like this, I may just have to decide this is what the powers-that-be consider “mission accomplished” for this particular tranche of death and disease).

It’s nice that for deaths I have a simple, daily chart that just keeps chugging along, unlike everything else CDC and the White House are screwing up or letting go dark, good job. (Though CDC may be jiggering the numbers soon. Lower, naturally.)

Stats Watch

Employment Situation: “United States Unemployment Rate” [Trading Economics]. “The unemployment rate in the US inched lower to 3.4 percent in January 2023, the lowest level since May 1969 and below market expectations of 3.6 percent.” • I wondered what the labor force participation rate was:

Services: “United States ISM Non Manufacturing PMI” [Trading Economics]. “The ISM Services PMI for the US unexpectedly jumped to 55.2 in January of 2023, rebounding sharply from over a 2-1/2 year low of 49.2 in December, and beating market forecasts of 50.4. Capacity and logistics performance continued to improve and the majority of companies indicated that business is trending in a positive direction.”

* * *

The Bezzle: “Trends in AI from Red and Blue Team Perspectives: Synthetic Data in a Data-Driven Society vs Sentiment Analysis” [NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence]. “[M]ore granular text analysis enables micro aggressive and aggressive text patterns to be searched, thus allowing the identification of hostile communications in various online and social media data.” • “He used… sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, pathos, puns, parody, litotes and… satire. He was vicious.”

The Bezzle: Who’s training who?

Tech: “Mangled Voice-to-Text Messages Are Embarrassing Users” [Wall Street Journal]. “Technology that transcribes speech in real time keeps growing in popularity—and so do our potential for gaffes. They’ve become so common that some people, such as Ms. Nieves, have made regular mistakes part of their vocabulary, while others have learned to decode the gibberish their family and friends send. In the U.S., around 82 million people used Alphabet Inc.’s Google Assistant and about 77 million used Apple Inc.’s Siri at least once a month last year to handle oral commands, including writing text messages, emails and social-media posts, according to Insider Intelligence. Both numbers were up 12% or more from 2020, and the firm didn’t count manual triggering of speech transcription on phones or laptops. The technology allows people to avoid the scourge of typing on tiny smartphone screens. Others rely on it for crafting copy hands-free, such as while driving. The risk is it tends to turn words into mumbo jumbo, pick up nearby voices and introduce off-putting language. On social media, users warn against saying certain words, like ‘caulk’ and the shorthand ‘P & S,’ lest the talk-to-text app thinks it hears a reference to male anatomy. While dictating a text about golfing to his former boss last summer, Matt Shelton uttered, ‘Great shot!’ before hitting ‘send.’ As he waited for a reply, Mr. Shelton, an insurance agent in Winfield, Kan., looked back at the transcription in horror. ‘Shot’ was misspelled by one letter, turning it into an expletive.” • So Google and Apple said “Ship it!” and here we are.

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 79 Extreme Greed (previous close: 72 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 69 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 3 at 12:30 PM EST. Awesome. A breakthrough to extreme greed at last.

Class Warfare

“Nearly 36 Million Americans Who Tested Positive for COVID-19 Report Having Long COVID Symptoms — Including More Than 40% in Mississippi” [Value Penguin]. Handy chart:

Income is a poor proxy for class, which is a social relation. Nevertheless.

“In first test before appeals court, important worker safety law is affirmed, with notable caveat” [Investigate Midwest]. “In the pandemic’s early days, employees of a Pennsylvania food processing plant believed they faced an immediate threat. Their employer, they alleged, crowded them together and didn’t provide enough masks when the federal government promoted social distancing and face coverings. They sued the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, hoping for relief. After first sending letters, an inspector visited the plant, named Maid-Rite, about two months later. While not standard procedure, the agency gave the plant advance notice because the worksite had “potential COVID-19 exposure,” as the inspector testified. Ultimately, the agency determined an imminent danger did not exist. On Tuesday, the lawsuit reached its conclusion. A federal appeals court dismissed the lawsuit, but, in the process, it affirmed one of the ‘most imporant tools’ for workers, as one former OSHA official has put it. That tool is the right for workers, if faced with ‘imminent danger,’ to sue OSHA if the agency takes no action ‘abritrarily or capriciously.’ While affirming that right, the court also said workers can only sue while OSHA is in the midst of its enforcement proceedings, which can stretch on for years.”

Hmm:

Odi et amo….

News of the Wired

“Read all about it: how typography influences your understanding” [Physics World].

The realm of typography is a “magic forest”, according to Bringhurst, endowing human language with “a durable, visible form, and thus with an independent existence”. While some areas in that forest are well travelled, many are spectacular and wild. In the far-out font Beowulf, for instance, computers introduce tiny random perturbations into the letters, making each slightly dissimilar and reading them a surprisingly fresh experience.

Physicists might not realize, but typography has a huge impact on the reading experience. Bad design, Bringhurst says, makes “the letters mill and stand like starving horses in a field”, while careless design makes them “sit like stale bread and mutton on the page”. Good design involves an “energetic repose” whose paradoxical ambition is to draw our eyes in and then vanish. The late Beatrice Ward, Bringhurst’s scholarly predecessor, compared typography to a crystal goblet, “because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain”.

Moreover, Bringhurst writes, choosing a font is like framing a painting in that it has to suit the contents. Think, he says, of how silly “a cubist painting in an eighteenth-century gilded frame” would be. Or, closer to home, imagine if you had to read page after page of Physics World in Comic Sans – the supposedly playful font adopted in many cheesy PowerPoint presentations and even by future CERN boss Fabiola Gianotti when she announced the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

Readers, how about next week is “Feel Good Cleveland Week”? I had a lot of fun with Fresno:

* * *

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. From Katiebird:

Katebird writes: “We’ve walked under this tree for many, many years on our walk. And the light at the 11 am hour makes it jump out of the woods. The past few months have been hard on the poor thing. But this morning it really glowed.”

* * *

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About Lambert Strether

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

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98 comments

  1. Wukchumni

    “Buttigieg, two years into Biden’s Cabinet, ‘not planning on going anywhere’” [Politico]. • Well, he got right. He’s not going anywhere
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Went to the PBS Newshour word salad bar yesterday where while not nourishing the mix of cheerful bullshit and can do spirit that everyone knows is going nowhere, Mayo Pete can toss one like few others, just add addressing.

    1. semper loquitur

      If you really feel like tossing your lunch, go read his Medium page. The comments section is a virtual tongue-bath of sycophancy. You’ll need a hot shower afterwards. I’m sure his $hit-lib flatterers quiver with pride when they check off the “publicly admire a gay parent” block on their Moral Preening Bingo card…

      1. Wukchumni

        I always feel as if my time has been violated when listening to him, perhaps a lawsuit is in order?

        1. JBird4049

          “Well, he got right. He’s not going anywhere.” Perhaps he could be sent to the dustbin of history? Having a political situation where such a nebbish man could be placed into, and remain after his failures, any cabinet position is frightening. After all, any federal level cabinet position is of great influence if not outright power, regardless of what one thinks of the agencies that they are running.

          1. Not Again

            Not going anywhere? That depends – Obama owes him for falling on his sword in 2020. If you think Booty-judge is not going anywhere, don’t forget The Night of the Long Knives gifted us with a corrupt, senile never-was who apparently is married to Lady McBeth.

            The same people who brought you Biden will have no issues with Buttigieg. He proved he can follow orders. That makes him invaluable.

        2. semper loquitur

          Interesting, I wonder if we could claim his mealy-worm mouthed dissembling causes harm to our psyches? I mean, they are trying to pillory Jordon Peterson up north for much the same thing. I know the mere sight of Pete makes my skin crawl. I mean that literally; he doesn’t appear to be fully human. There is something so….invertebrate about him. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that someone cut him in half and two whole Petes formed, spluttering platitudes and making soft, mewling noises…

          1. Nikkikat

            He does look exactly like Alfred E. Newman from mad magazine. Couldn’t figure out who he reminded of until Trump said it. LOL! Now I cannot unsee it. One of Trumps funnier lines ever.

          2. hunkerdown

            Jordie was selling a synthesis of the Calvinist social order and the neoliberal economic order, so I think there is a material case for Peterson’s culpability for harm.

            1. semper loquitur

              No doubt Peterson is a canker on the a$$ of civilization, but the Woke ideologues harrying him are just as problematic. The fact they are using the power of the state, via licensing, to silence him is problematic. And he is wealthy and powerful enough to walk away, it’s the less well positioned dissenters who are being silenced and seeing their lives derailed.

              1. chris

                I feel sorry for JP. If you know much about him he seems like a miserable figure. He’s also one of the few people who has any capacity for pushing back against woke insanity so it’s interesting to both watch him and reactions to him.

  2. Carolinian

    Cleveland–Randy Newman wrote a song about it….it’s where John D. Rockefeller, devout Baptist and oil tycoon got his start–the rest being AGW history…it hosts the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because it was such an obvious location (???)

    I have a close friend who grew up in Akron, home of the soap box derby and Goodyear blimp. That’s almost Cleveland.

    Think that’s all I’ve got…

    1. Wukchumni

      Cleveland has never had the pleasure of my visit, and all I can add is that the guy they named the city after was named Moses, but they butchered the spelling as his last name was Cleaveland, but this is FGCW, so we’ll let bygones be bygones.

      My better half from Buffalo sez Cleveland is kinda a sister city of sorts to Nickel City.

      But looking it up, one of Cleveland’s sister cities is Volgograd, Russia, and there’s 1/3rd of the ‘Russia-Russia-Russia’ chant right there.

      1. Harold

        Severance Hall is the most beautiful performance space I have ever seen and Cleveland has a wonderful art museum also. It deserves better (and so does Buffalo).

        1. Carolinian

          Hey we were just kidding. A world class orchestra is something to brag about.

          I did once make a very brief visit to Cleveland but don’t remember much.

        2. notabanker

          There is a small area of downtown that is pretty safe, Flats, Warehouse District, Gateway with the Casino sandwiched in the middle of them. Chinatown area between E. 30th and 39th has some great asian food. West Side Market is really nice and high quality but tremendously over-priced. New breweries have popped up all around there. Going out past 40th on either side of town and it goes downhill quickly.

          I was not a fan of tax funded Gateway, but it has really made a difference in making downtown someplace to go vs a war zone to be avoided. The restaurant strip down E 4th is worth the trip and Tremont has some excellent locally owned food spots.

          University Circle has the museums and orchestra but is can be flat our dangerous getting in and out of there if you take the wrong way, and it’s confusing to navigate.

          On the flipside, take a drive down Broadway to E 55th to the shoreway and it’s a case study in the decline of western civilization, and that is not hyperbole. Burger Kings, Dollar Stores, Nail shops and of course CVS are the only businesses left standing amongst the gigantic abandoned factories and warehouses and neglected neighborhoods of houses and churches. Monuments to a bygone era of the working class.

          1. Screwball

            Couple of hours from Cleveland. Been there many times. Usually to the ball park. Parts good, parts not. Grew and thrived by the shipping of the great lakes and the industrial revolution to the north. Then it all left. A shell of what once was. So sad.

      2. marku52

        I just repaired a 1951 Valco guitar amp, (It looked like a sewing machine!). Valco was a CM before it was a thing, made amps for all kinds of companies like Gretsch and Silvertone.

        This one was nameplated:
        “Oahu Publishing Company, Cleveland OH”

    2. Bart Hansen

      The one grandfather I never met died in Cleveland. He left St Paul in the middle of the Depression to find work.

      1. LifelongLib

        My grandparents from Georgia lived in Cleveland during the 1920s and my dad was born there. They moved back to Georgia during the Depression and AFAIK never lived in Cleveland again. I never met that grandfather either; he died three years before I was born.

    3. Lena

      I went to Cleveland once. They had the worst Greyhound bus station restroom I have ever seen and I’ve seen more than a few. They deserve a prize (or something) for that.

    4. britzklieg

      “Burn on, big river, burn on
      Burn on, big river, burn on
      Now the Lord can make you tumble
      And the Lord can make you turn
      And the Lord can make you overflow
      But the Lord can’t make you burn”

        1. Rod

          Cleveland Week should be interesting–
          I remember that was quite a blaze that got everyone talking.
          my ‘Unc’ was the shop Foreman for Halverson Boiler down in the Flats in the 60/70s and told how they had to send everyone home. The Tug Co was who brought their Ships into moorings for repair. I often went down there with him on Saturdays and wandered their river frontage–yuck on that compared to the Tinkers Creek which his/our place backed up to.
          My kid is a Cleveland Hghts homeowner who just finished work on a low budget Film highlighting Cleveland Landmarks which reinforce the movie plot–written and directed by a successful Local.
          St Stanislaus in Slavic Village got a role as did the Tremaine-Gallagher House on Fairmount, along with the more familiar icons. The kid felt like a real insider shooting in those locations.

          HMP, another resident, below has an interesting anecdote on Sutton Hdwe

    5. Amfortas the hippie

      ive never been to ohio…and indeed, i can find not familial/historical relationship to the state in either my family, or wife’s.
      so it was surprising when, at 2 years of age, my Youngest(now almost 17) decided that he liked Ohio…the Browns are his futbal team, etc.
      Orange is his favorite color.
      and so on.

      1. Henry Moon Pie

        At least he’s not a fan of ‘Murca’s team, but to be a Browns’ fan for any length of time requires a certain level of masochism.

  3. Barbara

    The U.S. House just voted – Democrats 109 joined Republicans 218 to pass Resolution – 9. The resolution asserts that the U.S. “was founded on the belief in the sanctity of the individual, to which the collective system of socialism in all of its forms is fundamentally and necessarily opposed.” 87 Dems voted Nay. Ro Khanna who voted Yea describes himself as a “progressive capitalist.” Oh, the horrors

    1. Ghost in the Machine

      “socialism in all of its forms”

      Obviously language aimed at health care reform etc. Depressing, but these are not the actions of a confident people. This is the action of a moribund elite desperately trying to save the dying system they parasitically enrich themselves from.

      1. pjay

        Yep. There’s 327 votes that will never permit any *positive* health care reform, though given their “belief in the sanctity of the individual” I’m sure more Medicare privatization is doable.

        By the way, is Social Security a form of socialism? Just askin’.

        1. Amfortas the hippie

          but can I , as a Sanctified Individual, now…say…smoke pot in my yard?
          engage in group marriage?
          declare myself a TAZ(Temporary Autonomous Zone)?
          Unplug from the Merchine altogether?
          I hope Cato, et alia, are looking into this important development…

        2. petal

          Or fixing the PO? They doubled my mailbox fee. Went in and asked clerk if there had been a mistake. Clerk said they were blown away when the jump came through from above. I only have the box because I don’t trust my mail actually making it to my apt box.

          1. ambrit

            I love that the hard core Republicans managed to have that arch-reactionary DeJoy appointed to head the Post Office, yet the subsequent Democrat Party Administration has done nothing effective to replace him.
            I’m not alone in thinking this: https://chestnuthilllocal.com/stories/why-is-dejoy-still-in-charge-of-the-usps,25309?
            I worked for the USPS for several years once. Even back then it was a H— job. Getting a full time position was a long and difficult process. Working there as a “part timer” was literally like being a chattel slave. You were at the whim of the regulars at all times. You could not get a full week’s work most times and still could not keep a second job; you couldn’t guarantee any time slots during the day to the second employer.
            Keep that Post Office Box if you can afford to. Street delivery looks to be set to degrade even further. From what I have heard from mail carriers I speak to irregularly, morale is still dropping. The old pros are retiring as soon as possible and their replacements are suffering degraded work conditions.
            All this for an institution that is enshrined in the Constitution no less!
            Neo-liberalism has no lower bound.

          2. cnchal

            When USPS switched to ‘dim’ weight at the end of Jan 2020 my postage rates nearly quadrupled instantaneously. For example what cost just below $20 one day became $73 the next day and just to see what happened since then, it is now $101

            That price will never come down, unlike the price to ship a giant container from China weighing tens of tons costs twelve times moar than to ship my less than four pound package by truck across the country. See how fucked up this all is?

            I have come to the conclusion that USPS is in the business of ripping off elderly women that want to send a bulky winter coat to their grandchild and that’s it. The prices are so comically high they can only do that once because even they will think twice before approaching the counter.

            All that business went to UPS or FedEx who now have all sorts price increase room to put the screws to everyone. They have captured USPS and are destroying it from the inside out with DeJoy as their destroyer.

            When the government hands over the USPS to the private sector, that’s called capitalism because they stole it fair and square, and now for the encore, socialism is officially the new swear word, brought to us by venal narcissists bought and paid for by the elite with money stolen from the peasants.

      2. The Rev Kev

        ‘This is the action of a moribund elite desperately trying to save the dying system they parasitically enrich themselves from.‘

        That is exactly what is going on.

    2. LawnDart

      New Dem Leadership will vote for the resolution denouncing socialism tomorrow.

      Could they possibly say “One-party, two-wings” any better than that?

      1. Lena

        Sure they could, with a 16 piece KFC bucket. It includes 4 wings, along with 4 large sides and 8 biscuits for only $36.99. Such a deal.

      2. The Rev Kev

        The trouble with that One-party, Two-Wings is that both wings are right wings which leads it to continuously flying itself into the ground.

      1. Not Again

        So maybe it was “bad marketing” for Bernie to call himself a “socialist.” He would have gotten more acceptance if he had called himself a “pervert.”

    4. hunkerdown

      The key word is “Maduro”. It seems pretty likely that the resolution is their bipartisan❤ permission slip to run another project against him, for the crime of not rolling over for their last project.

      1. digi_owl

        Got to freedom all that crude, so that all those upstanding, god fearing, Americans can keep on rolling coal…

        1. hunkerdown

          True. Venezuela also has non-black gold, which may be useful when the dollar loses reserve status.

      1. Rod

        Whereas the United States of America was founded on the belief in the sanctity of the individual, to which the collectivistic system of socialism in all of its forms is fundamentally and necessarily opposed: Now, therefore, be it
        Sanctity of the individual–founded on that?

  4. semper loquitur

    ““As a frontline healthcare worker, I am against the ongoing requirement for mask-wearing in all clinical areas, for the simple reason that there appears to be no concept of when it will end.”

    Simple indeed. Petulant fool. One would think? hope? pray? that a healthcare worker would know that COVID will decide when masking will end. I mean, I do, and I’m not in healthcare.

    Meanwhile, a family friend stopped by yesterday with her precious little gumdrop of a two year old daughter. She apologized at one point in the conversation and asked my partner to repeat something she had said. Our friend then relayed that she had had COVID a few months earlier. Then a bad lung infection. Then a bad nasal infection. Then a bad ear infection that had left her deaf in one of her ears. She hopes that her hearing will return, apparently her doctor was unable to confirm that would be the case.

    I’ve been gargling and misting my nose on and off since she left yesterday.

    1. Jason Boxman

      I know of a coworker who’s boss said this week that he’s known more people that have gotten COVID recently than ever before so far. Like 5 to 10 people, not all related. Such a mystery how this could possibly be happening /snark

    2. Nikkikat

      Yeah, one would think that people likely to be exposed would have some interest in protecting themselves. They don’t. My recent experience with Nurses, doctors and staff at a large hospital was that they just parrot the crap from the CDC. Pandemic over! Put their fingers in their ears and say lalala. When I insisted on my N95 mask and that they should have one on too. They did comply with the their worthless surgical mask. Then loudly complained out side the door, that if “I didn’t have Covid, then why did they have to wear a mask?”

      1. semper loquitur

        Nope, they don’t. I know a bunch of people who have been sick with it, some more than once, and none of them regularly mask. I’m sure they are all boosted. Non-pharma protections like gargling and nose sprays aren’t even on their radar.

  5. Jason Boxman

    That speech to text is so sad, but not for the reason you think. Trying to text on my iPhone fills me with rage frequently because profanity is not Apple-approved, so even with text replacement setup it still refuses to let me swype profanity. Thanks Jobs! Thanks Apple! Thanks Cook! (Other words that are banned include genocide, murder, and killing, which sadly in America of 2023 are all valuable words to be able to swype.)

    I guess the secret is to start using text to speech.

    That IS news I can use!

    1. Ranger Rick

      I’m far more concerned about the last refuge of humanity in our computerized age: the analog loophole. If they get any better at transcribing speech (and Facebook (et al.) get better at that “keyword monitoring” that people got so paranoid about a few years ago), we’re in for pervasive surveillance on a scale that beggars the imagination.

  6. cnchal

    > . . . “They concluded that young and middle-aged Americans who view themselves as attractive ‘believe wearing a mask hinders the opportunities to deliver a favorable impression to others’.

    Spraying covid bullets from your mouth doesn’t make a favorable impression to anybody with a functioning brain.

  7. Wukchumni

    “Hunter Biden Claims His Laptop” [Wall Street Journal]. “Hunter Biden did some reckless things, is unhappy people found out, and so is now doing something equally reckless. Oh, and by the way, that laptop really is his. That’s the news out of a batch of letters sent this week by Hunter’s attorneys. They are demanding federal and state prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service launch investigations into those involved with distributing the contents of ‘Mr. Biden’s files’ from his infamous laptop.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Bad luck streak in laptop dance school
    Down on my knees in pain
    Bad luck streak in laptop dance school
    Swear to God I’ll change
    Swear to God I’ll change
    Swear to God I’ll change
    Swear to God I’ll change
    Daddy-o, don’t make me beg

    Bad luck streak in laptop dance school
    Down on my knees in pain
    I’ve been acting like a fool
    Daddy-o I swear I’ll change
    Down on my knees in pain
    Down on my knees in pain
    Down on my knees in pain
    Down on my knees in pain

    Bad luck streak in laptop dance school
    Down on my knees in pain
    I’ve been breaking all the rules
    Swear to God I’ll change
    Swear to God I’ll change
    Swear to God I’ll change
    Swear to God I’ll change
    Swear to God I’ll change

    Demonize my interlocutors in vain
    Down on my knees in pain
    Demonize my interlocutors in vain
    Down on my knees in pain

    Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School, by Warren Zevon

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m67_CjGJ8KE

  8. JBird4049

    >>>On social media, users warn against saying certain words, like ‘caulk’ and the shorthand ‘P & S,’

    As someone who wears two hearing aids, close captioning is just wonderful, and to a lesser amount, so has Voice-to-Text Messages, especially in poor conditions like a noisy room (or head colds, allergies, busted aids, etc.) but I really do wonder how does any translation program regularly mangle two similar but still distinct words like caulk and c—. Would it be using probabilities instead of actually transcribing the words? The former word is used far less than the latter word. It is too bad that there is no way for the users on either end to program in the corrected wording for future use for the people they regularly talk to.

    More importantly, some people, like me, really use these programs because we often don’t have a choice, but it is nice to know that they just don’t care about that. They just care for the money appearances can get them.

    1. hunkerdown

      Betcha* young people talk a lot more about [chicken] than [building supply]. At a certain age, modified by income level, the probabilities cross over. As the first digital generation gets old, the probabilities will start to represent that of the whole population. Also, some accents elide or palatalize the l in “caulk”.

      The Gboard keyboard definitely uses a language model to predict the three most likely next words. It would be unsurprising for their transcription product to do the same.

      * another word one would be ill-advised to say to a transcribing robot

      1. Amfortas the hippie

        “Also, some accents elide or palatalize the l in “caulk”.”

        it can be much worse.
        i speak in a slow, rolling east texas drawl…with bits of other dialects strewn about because of family history(“warsh clothes”, “stand in the koner”, “shonuff”,etc).

        ive tried it on my fone, once.
        came out as incomprehensible gibberish.

  9. JM

    Looks like there was a data error in the Transmission Levels map since January 30th (from checking the WC that day) that was just rectified today. The number per level (of counties? something else?) had been doubled for some reason. I missed it until today when the numbers seemed to halve mysteriously. Hopefully it isn’t indicative of a GIGO issue…

    And from curiosity I checked the CH numbers against the 30th, it’s actually gone down!

  11. Wukchumni

    At a crossroads on the outskirts of Visalia, a small city 200 miles north of Los Angeles (where the local paper once remarked, “There’s nearly more cows than people”), Christian fervour is brewing. On one corner stands the 3,000-seat megachurch of Visalia First, a big shed wrapped with the full-height tinted windows of a car showroom. Across the six-lane intersection is the more modest octagonal pavilion of the United Methodist church, as well as a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. And on the fourth corner of the holy junction, bringing a stately air to proceedings, now stands the biggest Catholic parish church in the whole of North America.

    https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/feb/03/visalia-inside-the-biggest-catholic-parish-church-in-north-america
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    There’s only 138k in Godzone, but now they’ve got the biggest Catholic parish church in the country!

    And its cheek by jowl in close proximity to evang megachurches and other faiths, Caldwell Avenue being the dogma happy hunting ground.

    Don’t know if i’d have gone for the ‘mission revival’ look, nobody really talks about Junipero Serra anymore, guess they didn’t get the news. It also bears some resemblance to the Alamo, again a no go.

    1. ambrit

      So, you now have what Fritz Leiber called in his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, a Street of Gods.
      One could almost say, with a straight face, that the “Official God Reps” have “cornered the market.”

  12. fresno dan

    This time I thought I’d count the times the words “member” or “membership” is used. I got twelve. Did I miss any? Direct mail mavens: Isn’t this a little excessive? Even a little desperate? This time I thought I’d count the times the words “member” or “membership” is used. I got twelve. Did I miss any? Direct mail mavens: Isn’t this a little excessive? Even a little desperate? Who exactly do they hope to persuade? *
    Somebody quite elderly and vulnerable?**
    ================
    * me, apparently, based on the daily emails I get
    ** are you calling me quite elderly? you say that as if it were a bad thing

    1. ambrit

      I was fascinated to count the number of times variations of the word “active” were used. That ‘felt’ to me like a demand.
      “Activate your membership!”
      Activate, activated, and activating: deployed ten times.
      I didn’t know that you could e-mail a “hard sell.” Guess I was wrong.
      Oh, and I hope that Lambert has aired out his yellow waders and acquired extra strong PU100 air filtres for his mask. The “State of the Union Address” is only five days away!

    2. dcblogger

      my theory is that Mothership is deliberately destroying email as a channel. Likewise ActBlue’s new owners selling the list to everyone. There are many people in Washington, DC who have influence ONLY because they can raise $. In a world where you can send out an email and raise a million $ from thousands of small donors these people would have zero influence. And they know it. So they are working to kill the channel. Or so say I.

  13. fresno dan

    Tech: “Mangled Voice-to-Text Messages Are Embarrassing Users” [Wall Street Journal].
    I use the exclamation, “holy flurking shnit” (its from the Simpsons) and it gets transcribed as…well, you know.

  14. Jason Boxman

    Latest cheery news today: https://thegauntlet.substack.com/p/covid-can-damage-your-heart-not-talking?publication_id=1173135&post_id=100502232&isFreemail=true

    Meanwhile, the public may not understand the risks they are taking with continual reinfection- but they certainly can observe that something is off. Unfortunately, the explanation they’re reaching for as we witness a higher level of sudden deaths is not *infection with a novel pathogen*, it’s *the vaccine did it.*

    I think it’s easier to conclude that vaccination, getting injected with something with a needle, is responsible, than “just getting sick”, albeit with a novel pathogen, when people are accustomed to occasionally getting sick throughout their lives. ’tis a shame, as this sets back legitimate vaccination campaigns for decades to come.

    With so many damaged immune systems, what kind of evolution might we see in other pathogens?

  15. griffen

    Today’s economic news. Best payroll report! Jobs are plentiful, inflation is going lower we promise and there is no problem the Biden administration can not solve! Joe Biden is here and can save us all. \SARC

    Ok, maybe the inflation thingy is going to linger just a bit more. This gives credence to the motto, the beatings (from the FED and higher rates) will continue until employee morale improves. I have doubts that the medicine of higher rates is going to be the right dosage. Obviously, the lingering bad taste of all those mean Tech and IT company layoffs didn’t really linger much.

    Added. It’s your own darn fault if you can’t pay $10 for a dozen eggs. Is life in America 2023 real good or am I tilting at windmills like a Don Quixote?

    1. The Rev Kev

      Meanwhile at the Treasury Building in DC, the lights are flashing, the alarms are ringing and you can only hear ‘Woop, woop! Terrain! Terrain. Pull up! Pull up!’

      1. griffen

        I just had an epic rant about the above tweet, from our 46th US President. It’s possible I hit the wrong button, and instead of being submitted I vanquished my rant into the dustbin. Okay since I probably drunk dialed what I was typing.

        Basically, Joe R Biden would not know or understand Capitalism if it hits him in the face. That tweet linked above seems like it was written by a highly green intern. These people live in ivory towers and see what they choose to see ( I see green fields and blue skies!). Monopolistic impulses happened while he was the sitting VP, for only like 8 years. But now he sees the light. FFS. Oh and Meta can reveal to investors a supposedly great earnings reports and do their stock buyback program and it’s quite ok. Meta does not sell oil or gas. So a tech monopolistic empire is net positive.

        And then there’s Mayor Pete. I am digressing, that is for certain.

  16. The Rev Kev

    “Rethinking COVID hegemony”

    The key to how they are doing this in Oz is that the media is refusing to talk about anything to do with Covid. I cannot recall the last time that I heard it mentioned on the news. And not only do they refuse to talk about this topic for Oz but they refuse to talk about it with other countries as well. So, if a person falls to Covid and the media do not talk about it – did it happen?

  17. Lunker Walleye

    Typefaces: Last week I had to deal with a vendor to create a plaque for our brother’s memorial bench. As my Austrian graphics professor insisted that type should amplify the meaning of the message, I worked hard to put together the appropriate type and image to represent my brother’s existence to go onto the 6″x4″ brass plate. Samples of Palatino appeared on plates on their website, so I assumed I could use that typeface and worked up very specific instructions. When I ask for the company’s proof, they sent it back with the Bookman. Apparently I was looking at plaques that were done by an outsourced company and now they were creating their own in house. It seems Bookman is the only typeface they have. Mon Dieu!

    Maybe some Cubist paintings would look terrific in Baroque frames.

    1. Realist

      Thanks! Crazy allegations. Probably all true. i have read her articles but have never seen her talking in the flesh before. She seems young, I wonder what her backstory is, and how does she get this information?

      3. Emuood

        My understanding is that she derives her info from the public record and joins the dots. I think it could be like pulling on a piece of thread and eventually unraveling the pattern of the cloth.

    2. Lunker Walleye

      Thanks for this. Whitney was supposed to have on Useful Idiots about 1-1/2 years ago. At the last minute they announced somebody else would be on without mentioning why W.W. would not be. I found that curious.

  19. The Rev Kev

    ‘My 13yo just tested positive for 2nd time in SIX WEEKS. Pediatrician said “that’s impossible” & became hostile when I tried to explain different variants dominant in DC at those times without cross-immunity & was a documented 2nd exposure. Doctors flying blind & have given up.’

    Doctor becoming hostile in spite of the facts not agreeing with their own ideas? Have read that a coupla times and have experienced it myself. It is not the job of us muppets to keep track of the latest pandemic research but it is the job of doctors to do so but so many don’t. What the hell man. I do wonder about that woman in that tweet. Did the doctor also tell her to make sure that she and her 13 year-old son get an annual Covid vaccine too?

  21. Acacia

    Re: “Hunter Biden Claims His Laptop”

    Having skimmed the Marco Polo report, my impression is that Hunter and Joe should both be in jail.

  22. Henry Moon Pie

    Sutton Hardware on Prospect?–

    Wow. That’s my neighborhood! Early on in our rehab project, we bought our extension ladder at Sutton’s. We only had an old Olds station wagon to transport it, so we tied the ladder to the top of the car and slowly made our way back to the house.

    There is one hardware store even closer, but it’s a combo pharmacy, grocery, Slavic wine and beer shop (
    Karlovačko!) and hardware, and the hardware is pretty limited. I haven’t been there since Covid since the checkout is very crowded and the ventilation iffy.

    Sutton’s, BTW, is a real hardware store that sells real tools, unlike the big box stores.

  23. ashley

    im surprised you didnt have mount washington weather observatory data in your stats watch. don’t quote me on it, but before i went to bed last night it was -46.3F with sustained winds of ~100MPH, a top gust of 127MPH and a country-wide record breaking windchill of -108F. in fact the weather was so insane, the stratosphere dropped to about 4000ft last night, putting the peaks of some ski areas into it as well.

    now i know theres a lot of old timers who will go back in my day… but anyways. ive been an avid snowboarder for over 25 years, and have paid close attention to the weather throughout, praying for snow.

    the weather right now is the talk of new england… but whats particularly concerning is normally extreme cold has light winds, not hurricane force winds. i would not be surprised if the so called chinese “spy” balloon was indeed a weather balloon studying this bizarre phenomenon.

    any weather nerds who are more educated on the topic have anything to say about the combo of extreme low temps and extreme high winds?

Comments are closed.