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2:00PM Water Cooler 4/4/2023

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Patient readers, I apologize for the missing Water Cooler yesterday; I had a seismic event in RL. Normally, I can power through anything, but I also have a subsystem in my head that tells me what day it is (necessary because of our odd schedule, and our authors spread all over the globe in multiple timezones). The seismic event was strong enough to decompensate the subsystem. Sorry about that, chiefs. Hopefully the outcome of the seismic event will be good. Ditto the outcome of this fundraiser (for which a tip jar is here). On the bright side, I finished up Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock. Frankly, I liked the part about the feral pigs best, but that was in the beginning. But it’s a page turner!

Then there is the matter of that local irritant, my suspended Twitter account. (Mercury is not in retrograde, but it certainly seems like it is.) Here is the rule: Never do irony on Twitter. I was responding to a Tweet that said, as one does, that the Covid death count didn’t matter because only the unfit old and the ill died. I responded with “Let me restate that: ‘Let’s kill all the old people.'” Twitter interpreted that as a threat of violence, and I failed (“after careful consideration”) on appeal. Clearly, Twitter content moderation cannot assess context, either within or between tweets, so I suspect a wretched algo or (already!) an especially stupid AI. My workflow will be back to normal after I curate the new account I managed to get (and do not plan to lose). I will also give up chewing ankles, even of the very stupid or malevolent. The world will be a poorer place for that, but so it goes. Again, readers: Don’t do irony on social media! (You can do irony here, however; we have real moderators!)

Bird Song of the Day

Eastern Bluebird, Lincoln State Park, Spencer, Indiana, United States. “Recorded song at Weber Lake trailhead area at 6:11. Woodcock from above also audible.” 6:11! You have to get up early if you want to get out of bed, especially if you want to hear all the little dinosaurs singing in the trees.

* * *

Politics

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

2024

The Trump indictment has not yet been unsealed. So we know nothing. The only people who know anything are the media executives counting the clicks and rubbing their hands together.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a headline in Politico that large. Let’s wait and see.

EXECUTIVE: “Of course a helicopter. Spare no expense! Why not two?”

Accept nothing less than wide angle, ideally aerial. Like this:

A good turnout, but in my view, a crowd with an edge that easy to see isn't a good crowd.

#COVID19

"I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD." --William Lloyd Garrison

Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); "Iowa COVID-19 Tracker" (in IA, but national data).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. We are now up to 50/50 states (100%). This is really great! (It occurs to me that there are uses to which this data might be put, beyond helping people with "personal risk assessments" appropriate to their state. For example, thinking pessimistically, we might maintain the list and see which states go dark and when. We might also tabulate the properties of each site and look for differences and commonalities, for example the use of GIS (an exercise in Federalism). I do not that CA remains a little sketchy; it feels a little odd that there's no statewide site, but I've never been able to find one. Also, my working assumption was that each state would have one site. That's turned out not to be true; see e.g. ID. Trivially, it means I need to punctuate this list properly. Less trivially, there may be more local sites that should be added. NY city in NY state springs to mind, but I'm sure there are others. FL also springs to mind as a special case, because DeSantis will most probably be a Presidental candidate, and IIRC there was some foofra about their state dashboard. Thanks again!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d'Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (9), JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, otisyves, Petal (5), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Utah, Bob White (3). (Readers, if you leave your link in comments, I credit you by your handle. If you send it to me via email, I use your initials (in the absence of a handle. I am not putting your handle next to your contribution because I hope and expect the list will be long, and I want it to be easy for readers to scan.)

• More like this, please! Total: 1 6 11 18 20 22 26 27 28 38 39 43 47 50/50 (94% of US states).

* * *

Look for the Helpers

Thinking of others:

* * *

"Introducing: The Covid Underground" [Covid Underground]. The deck: "Welcome to The Covid Underground, a newsletter for the Covid-free movement and all of those who continue to avoid infection." More: "True health is the ability to change. About 10-30% of the U.S. population has changed their lives in the light of the freeing revelations of 2020, and we keep changing. We are dynamically, creatively faithful to what was— briefly— plain to all: normal is a dangerous illusion." • Worth a read.

"Covid Meetups" [COVID MEETUPS (JM)]. "A free service to find individuals, families and local businesses/services who take COVID precautions in your area." • I played around with it some. It seems to be Facebook-driven, sadly, but you can use the Directory without logging in. I get rational hits from the U.S., but not from London, UK, FWIW.

Finding like-minded people on (sorry) Facebook:

Maskstravaganza

Another victory for hospital infection control:

Scientific Communication

"‘If we don't, others will': White House Covid adviser calls on doctors to combat a vacuum of medical information [STAT]. "'What we have seen is the widespread propagation of misinformation and disinformation. And the reason it has taken root is because there was an information vacuum,' Jha said to the group, convened by the Massachusetts Medical Society with support from the New England Journal of Medicine Group. 'I come back to our role as physicians. It is critical that we fill that vacuum because if we don't, others will'.... Over the last year in the White House, Jha has seen an average of 250 to 500 people dying of Covid every day, despite plentiful free vaccines and treatments. 'If you are up to date on your vaccines and you get treated with Paxlovid, if you get an infection, you just don't die of this virus. Almost no one dies of this virus,' he said. 'Almost every one of those deaths is preventable. And yet people are still dying. And that is the power of misinformation. That is the power of disinformation that we all have to work on countering." • One hardly knows where to begin. First, #COVIDIsAirborne, and correct information on Covid must include its mechanism of transmission, so people are empowered to build their layered protection protocols. That is the real vacuum, which CDC and the Biden Admistration, bless their hearts, have never filled. Second, not only doctors, but epidemiologists, aerosol scientists, and engineers should be included in our "national conversation. And unions, so we can talk about the workplace. If doctors only "fill the vaccum," what we will get is another helping of the same old carrion that Jha serves up: That death is the only metric that matters. Jha himself propagatesa disinformation, because he ignores Long Covid, vascular and neurological damage from even "mild" cases, and non-pharmaceutical intervention generally. (Please remember that the Newton School system where Jha's children go slammed a million dollar ventilation system into place starting in September 2020. They knew what the score was. Exactly like Davos Man does. Yet not a word from Jha. The ruling class knows the score. They just don't want you to know.

Treatment

"Long COVID exercise trials proposed by NIH raise alarm" [Nature]. "Patients and patient advocates are calling on the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to reconsider its decision to include exercise trials in its RECOVER initiative, which aims to study and find treatments for long COVID. They argue that a large proportion of people with long COVID have reported experiencing post-exertional malaise (PEM) — a worsening of symptoms such as fatigue, difficulty regulating body temperature and cognitive dysfunction, after even light exercise — and worry that putting certain RECOVER participants through exercise trials could cause them harm. In a petition and multiple letters, the advocates request that the NIH and affiliated physicians explain their rationale for this testing and share the trial protocols." • Hmm.

Sequelae

"A cough I can't shake." Many examples:

But not immune dysregulation from Covid, of course not, that's CT....

Elite Malfeasance

The bankruptcy of the so-called left:

* * *

Looks like "leveling off to a high plateau" across the board. (I still think "Something Awful" is coming, however. I mean, besides what we already know about.) Stay safe out there!

Case Data

BioBot wastewater data from April 3:

Lambert here: The decline did not bottom out; my pessism was happily unwarranted. However, note that if we look at "the area under the curve," more people have died after Biden declared that "Covid is over" than before. And this will continue.

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.

Covid Emergency Room Visits

NOT UPDATED From CDC NCIRD Surveillance, from March 25:

NOTE "Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period." So not the entire pandemic, FFS (the implicit message here being that Covid is "just like the flu," which is why the seasonal "rolling 52-week period" is appropriate for bothMR SUBLIMINAL I hate these people so much. Anyhow, I added a grey "Fauci line" just to show that Covid wasn't "over" when they started saying it was, and it's not over now. Notice also that this chart shows, at least for its time period, that Covid is not seasonal, even though CDC is trying to get us to believe that it is, presumably so they can piggyback on the existing institutional apparatus for injections.

Positivity

From the Walgreen's test positivity tracker, published April 2:

0.2%. At the low point of the last valley, but the first increases in awhile.

Deaths

Death rate (Our World in Data):

Total: 1,155,356 - 1,154,894 = 462 (462 * 365 = 168,630 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).

Excess Deaths

NOT UPDATED Excess deaths (The Economist), published March 28:

Lambert here: Based on a machine-learning model. Looks like a data issue, to me. I"m not sure how often this updates, and if it doesn't, I'll remove it. (The CDC has an excess estimate too, but since it ran forever with a massive typo in the Legend, I figured nobody was really looking at it, so I got rid it.

• Yes, but what is "excess"?

"Excess" is a number we have not yet normalized, exactly as "cases" is a number we no longer count.

Stats Watch

Employment Situation: "United States ADP Employment Change" [Trading Economics]. "Private businesses in the US unexpectedly created 242K jobs in February of 2023, well above an upwardly revised 119K in January and market forecasts of 200K."

Logistics: "United States LMI Logistics Managers Index Current" [Trading Economics]. "The Logistics Manager's Index in the US fell to a record low of 51.1 in March of 2023, pointing to the weakest growth in the logistics sector since records began in 2016. The transportation prices declined by 5 points to a record low of 31.1 amid lower fuel prices. Also, transportation utilization fell to 50, indicating no upward movement for the first time in 2023. Inventory Levels continued to grow though at a decreasing rate (-6.8 to 55.6) with a bigger focus on retail and consumables as goods that are most impacted by interest rates piled up over the last year. " • Hat tip, the Fed! (Nobody ever seems to ask who fills the proverbial punchbowl in the first place, before the Fed takes it away. I suggest it's the workers, and the Fed consistently tripping them up or whipping them during the filling process is not as helpful as they believe it to be.

Manufacturing: "United States Factory Orders" [Trading Economics]. "New orders for US manufactured goods fell by 0.7 percent from a month earlier in February 2023, following a revised 2.1 percent drop in January and compared with market expectations of a 0.5 percent contraction. It was the second consecutive month of decline in factory orders." • Hat tip, the Fed!

Economic Optimism: "United States IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index" [Trading Economics]. "The IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index in the US rose for a third consecutive month to 47.4 in April of 2023, the highest since December of 2021, from 46.9 in March. However, the index remained in pessimistic territory, below the 50 neutral level, for a 20th straight month." • The beatings will continue....

* * *

Capital: "Technology Slump Refocuses Startups on Capital Discipline" [Wall Street Journal]. • It does seem that we have abandoned the important function of capital allocation to people who are not only prone to panic (SVB, etc., etc.) but who are, as the WSJ says, "undisciplined." (As I keep saying: "Too much stupid money sloshing about.") It's hard to see how a system of sortition would do worse, and maybe it would do better.

Real Estate: "Union Bank Plaza in Downtown LA Sells at a Big Loss" [Commercial Observer]. "Throughout the L.A. region, office activity has cooled significantly since the pandemic, especially in the central business district, and investor and lender appetite for office assets has dissipated with the rise of hybrid work and rising interest rates. Brookfield, the largest office landlord in L.A., defaulted on $754 million in loans tied to two Downtown L.A. office towers, and other skyscrapers, including the PacMutual Building and the 62-story Aon Center, are hitting the market at major discounts. To make matters worse and put more pressure on a potential sale, L.A.'s Measure ULA goes into effect April 1, which will increase transfer taxes by 5.5 percent on transactions over $10 million. 'Executing on large-scale office assets in today's environment requires an ability to address the entire capital stack and think outside the box. Even with a high-quality asset, these are not easy deals to close,' Mark Schuessler, an executive vice president with Colliers, said in a statement." • "Capital stack." Is that a new one?

The Bezzle: "How Can We Use Generative AI Responsibly?" [World Economic Forum]. AI = BS. Autocoprophagic content generation cannot be used responsibly under capitalism.

Tech: "Jetson Electric Bikes Recalls 42-Volt Rogue Self-Balancing Scooters/Hoverboards Due to Fire Hazard; Two Deaths Reported" [US Consumer Product Safety Commission]. "The lithium-ion battery packs in the self-balancing scooters/hoverboards can overheat, posing a fire hazard." • Greedy lazy people doing stupid things. They should stop.

Tech: "Apple Wants to Solve One of Music's Biggest Problems" [Wall Street Journal]. "Even the most sophisticated algorithms from the most technologically advanced companies are too clumsy to handle composers like Mozart and Brahms. That's because they were made for individual artists like Bad Bunny and Madonna. If you want to hear a Bad Bunny song, it will be in your ears within seconds. If you want to hear a Brahms piano concerto, good luck. Try sifting through hundreds of recordings without a standardized format to track down one movement from a particular soloist who has performed it several times. You could listen to an entire Madonna album in the time it takes to find the right Mozart." • So, a classification struggle, everywhere once you look (though I would have thought there are plenty of other big problems, like dreadful sound quality and paying artists).

* * *

Today's Fear & Greed Index: 51 Neutral (previous close: 60 Grreed) [CNN]. One week ago: 38 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Apr 4 at 12:26 PM ET. Holy moley! I missed the short excursion into Greed on Monday! Must have been quite a Nineteenth Hole!

Rapture Index: Closes unchanged [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 185. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) NOTE on #42 Plagues: "The coronavirus pandemic has maxed out this category." More honest than most!

The Conservatory

The key thing to remember about the Grateful Dead -- according to an article in a scholarly journal that I cannot now take time to dig up -- is that they're a dance band. So if Phil Lesh -- my favorite non-Beatle, my hero, the bass player -- plays "everything but the root and everywhere but on the beat" that doesn't matter, if people are dancing (which the Dead are famously good at getting people to do). So herewith an excellent verion of one of my favorite tunes, from 1971:

The "happy home (happy home)" refrain just slays me. And from 1972, another excellent, and very different, version.. "Rock on out"

I love the name of the venue: "Wembley Empire Pool, London, England." Apparently a swimming pool, not a betting pool. One of the fun things about the Dead is that you can collect the best of this and the best of that. Very successful business model. Probably not reducible to AI content.

Our Famously Free Press

"The Burden Of Blogging" [b, Moon of Alabama]. "Some times it's just like this. I am not feeling well. I am not sick but something is just not right. I have no idea what to post about. Every theme and issue feels so repetitive. It is the burden of blogging, especially when one tries to post every day." • Obviously, I have sympathy for b who is, like Yves and myself, is one of the old school bloggers, the people who used to do the "media critique." We linked to this article from Craig Murray a couple days ago. Some bombshell report or other, published simultaneously in Der Spiegel, WaPo, and the Grauniad, but who really cares. Murray comments:

[T]hat is 30 named journalists, with each publication deploying a large team to produce its own article.

And yet if you read through those three articles, you cannot help but note they are (ahem) remarkably similar.

Note that it is not just the central Hultquist quote which is the same. In each case the teams of thirty journalists have very slightly altered a copy-and-pasted entire paragraph.

In fact the remarkable sameness of all three articles, with the same quotes and sources and same ideas, makes plain to anybody reading that all these articles are taken from a single source document. The question is who produced that central document? I assume it is one of the "five security services", which all of the articles say were consulted.

I do think, then, that the "repetition" that b is reacting to stems from the inorganic character of most "news." In fact, the world is fantastically interesting, and not "repetive" at all (except of course at the elite level, either because they all went to the same schools, or because great wealth creates similar disorders where found).

Healthcare

Class Warfare

News of the Wired

"Amazon to close Book Depository online shop" [Guardian]. • So, just like DP Review, Amazon buys up a neat little company users, including me, love, and destroys it. The nice thing about Book Depository is that its search results weren't all spattered with crap, very much unlike the Bezos Death Machine. Can't have that. People might remember how software without any dark patterns works.

* * *

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 EMM:

EMM writes: "I took this photo last year in Kew Gardens in London. Kew Gardens is like a prison for plants. You can say what you want about the English but they build fantastic prisons." They do, but... This tree looks exactly like one of the trees Ernest Shepherd drew for Kenneth Graham's The Wind on the Willows, which you should read to any adjacent child before the successor ideology censor get at it, and only the original with black and white illustrations, nothing in color, let alone anything by Disney [shudder]:

There are other trees that are an exact match to EMM's photo, but this one is the only tree turned up by Google image search.

* * *

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn't see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I'm on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for 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:



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If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!

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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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119 comments

  1. Aaron

    Yup. Same. Lost decent sized Twitter account last year. No recourse. Irony is usually OK but never use a violent word like kill or murder etc especially in future tense or your account is what will actually die.

    1. Jeff W

      “‘Let’s kill all the old people.’”

      Kind of makes you wonder how Twitter content moderation deals with quoting Shakespeare. (Or maybe not.)

      1. fresno dan

        JW
        Maybe they didn’t like it because its soooooo erroneous – I mean they are trying to kill all the poor and wage earning people in the world as well…

    2. Adam Eran

      Those banned from Twitter might also take comfort in a fellow-banned person’s misery of being banned from Wikipedia.

      Take a look at the Wikipedia article about Government Spending. I’ve been banned from editing this.

      You can see my proposed edits in the “talk” tab (a link that’s upper left-ish).

      There’s literally a group of economists who will “edit war” with anyone opposing such baloney as the “Loanable Funds” theory or “Crowding out.” Wikipedia also bans “original research” like saying “Crowding out only makes sense if the economy is 100% employed, so government spending crowds out the private sector rather than activating unused resources.”

      The rest of the article itself is pretty valuable. For example, you can sort the table of government spending / government taxing as a percentage of GDP by clicking the headers of that table. The U.S. spends a relatively small portion of its GDP, ranking between Malta and Argentina. If you deduct about a third of its egregious military spending, the U.S. ranks between Mexico and Mauritania. Ever wonder why U.S. infrastructure is third-world bad? Guess who doesn’t spend on it…!

      One benefit of this article: the sources are right-wing–Heritage and Wall St. Journal. Even they say U.S. spending is modest.

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        > There’s literally a group of economists who will “edit war” with anyone opposing such baloney as the “Loanable Funds” theory or “Crowding out.” Wikipedia also bans “original research” like saying “Crowding out only makes sense if the economy is 100% employed, so government spending crowds out the private sector rather than activating unused resources.”

        Sounds like droplet dogma goons. (The “talk” is better than the article. I guess that’s the rule; Wikipedia has enough honesty left to at least not delete the “Team B” critique.)

      2. fjallstrom

        To edit war on Wikipedia you should avoid trying to reason, and instead pile up quotes from established researchers. In order to be an encyclopedia anyone can edit, they discount any expertise of the editor, other than the skill to find quotes by other authors (within Wikipedias frames of authoritative sources).

        If you push a non-mainstream view, best case scenario is to get a paragraph on the alternative view.

        And that is before you get to the spooks and paid trolls.

    3. skippy

      Wellie Lambert … it sounds like my experience with FB yonks ago after developing deep networks and presenting verifiable information to others, which put Hillary and the DNC in a bad light, during her last stint at taking the throne and had my account suspended.

      Noted it here on NC at the time.

      Welcome to the club mate …

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        > Katie Halper is having her own problems with her Twitter account-

        When I got my new tiny personal account, I noticed that during the onboarding process, most of the recommended accounts to follow for Politics and Business skewed right; FOX right, not Azov right, but still.

        1. The Rev Kev

          In my meanderings on YouTube daily, I notice that the recommended videos also skew right. And once you click on one of those, they want to send you right down the rabbit hole.

    6. Grunkle

      I’ve been hearing rumors of locked accounts getting unsuspended in record time if you just claim that “you’re a proud conservative silenced by Twitter police cancel culture” or something like that

    7. Acacia

      It’s almost like they really want us to open a Mastodon account and migrate away from Twitter.

    8. fjallstrom

      Kids on Tumblr claims that if your Twitter account is closed you need to larp a Trump voter. “Damn social justice warriors mass reported me because they had it out for me” or similar in the appeals process.

      No way to check if that is true. Could be. Could also be an internet myth.

      Speaking of internet myths, as I understand it, TikTok censors less than its users think. So the mask video might not have needed to use “unalive” for death and “panini” for pandemic, but why risk the ire of the AI?

  2. Jen

    Re excess deaths – the president our “small liberal arts college” used to send an email to the faculty, students and staff when someone died. Beginning last month, the college set up an In Memoriam page, and includes a notification with a link in our daily email digest. I guess the personal touch was fine when deaths among our community were rare, but when they start coming a the clip of one per week, as was the case in March, I suppose one needs to streamline. Or something.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > I guess the personal touch was fine when deaths among our community were rare, but when they start coming a the clip of one per week, as was the case in March, I suppose one needs to streamline

      That’s a truly excellent proxy. I wonder if anybody has aggregated this data, or if it can be aggregated.

    2. Tom Doak

      Years ago, during a visit to New Orleans, I noticed that the local paper would aggregate local murders into a single front-page story, so that visitors might not notice there were sometimes two or three murders in a single day.

      I’m sure many spaces give the same treatment to COVID deaths, because they don’t want you to do the math.

  3. Camelotkidd

    “Please remember that the Newton School system where Jha’s children go slammed a million dollar ventilation system into place starting in September 2020. They knew what the score was. Exactly like Davos Man does. Yet not a word from Jha. The ruling class knows the score. They just don’t want you to know.”
    This is the most important thing Americans need to understand about our feral elite.
    The slow motion genocide that the “deaths of despair” represents is just the beginning.
    “Go die” is the policy

  4. Samuel Conner

    > seismic event

    Not to mention the recent planetary syzygy.

    Glad you’re well. The silence yesterday was a bit un-nerving to me and, I think, to others. Stay well.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > The silence yesterday was a bit un-nerving to me and, I think, to others. Stay well.

      Don’t worry. If it was something medical I would have said so, and probably written up the experience.

      1. Joe Renter

        The absence of content made me reflect on not taking anything for granted. I kicked down a little something this morning for you. Thank you for all your hard work. It is appreciated by many.

        2. The Rev Kev

          Personally I don’t see how Lambert knocks out so many posts each and every week like clockwork and I was beginning to think that it might have been a medical episode. Perhaps one from an unspecified virus of unknown origin *ahem. Good to hear that it was only a lapse of knowing which day it was. Had something similar a long time ago.

          When younger I worked at a bank for a while and came home really tired so decided to have a quick nap. An hour later I woke up and decided to make some dinner but the day felt weird. The light was off and I soon realized that it was getting lighter, not darker. To my horror, I realized that I had not slept an hour but had slept about twelve hours – and it was time to go back to work! That was a very long work day that.

          1. Lambert Strether Post author

            > Personally I don’t see how Lambert knocks out so many posts each and every week like clockwork and I was beginning to think that it might have been a medical episode.

            Yves knocks out more than I do. We old school bloggers are extremely tough.

        3. Clark

          Yes, indeed. When Lambert dons the “yellow waders,” I feel especially blessed. But the day-to-day curating, categorizing, and commenting — well, I’m in awe. … So, kicking some now. … FWIW, I occasionally drop some “Lambertisms” when talking to friends & colleagues. Sometimes I get a glimmer of understanding.

          1. Late Introvert

            There were excess reloads of the NC home page yesterday afternoon if you check the logs!

          2. Lambert Strether Post author

            > I occasionally drop some “Lambertisms” when talking to friends & colleagues. Sometimes I get a glimmer of understanding.

            That is in fact one of the goals with old school blogging. That worked a lot better when there was a blogosphere, however, so we weren’t shouting into the void….

      2. Ea

        Watched “Yesterday” for the First Time today. Glad you came up dancing with Lesh and Weir. They were not so scripted and chased . . .and called. Constant music every where. Loved Godchaux, a voice that creates

        1. Lambert Strether Post author

          > Glad you came up dancing with Lesh and Weir

          I look up to Lesh. I admire him. But Weir is seriously under-rated. I know there are haters out there, but in my book the Dead are a great band with a great songbook, and at their peak (in my mind 1971-1972) certainly one of the best bands in the world [old man shakes fist at cloud]. I never did see Parliament Funkadelic live; perhaps if I had, I would put them in the same pantheon.

    2. Art Vandalay

      Indeed. The disturbance in the force left my Monday unbalanced, but it did remind me of the fundraiser and prompted me to donate, so there’s that. Water Cooler and Lambert are essential to my daily effort to cope with corporate dystopia. Thank you!

  5. John

    “This tree looks exactly like one of the trees Ernest Shepherd drew for Kenneth Graham’s The Wind on the Willows, which you should read to any adjacent child before the successor ideology censor get at it,…”

    The overweening Pecksniffian arrogance of people who presume to Bowdlerize works of literary art to conform to their cramped and tortured notion of propriety. I condemn them to read nothing but New Speak for the rest of their days. May the authors whose work you have assaulted haunt them like Marley’s Ghost.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > overweening Pecksniffian arrogance

      I can’t imagine why Alice in Wonderland has managed to survive. (Again, the original books with the Cruikshank illustrations are brilliant. Share that one with the kids too, and not anything modern [shudder].

      Challenge to our wordsmiths: Write up a successor ideology version of “The Walrus and the Carpenter”

      “The sun was shining on the sea,
      Shining with all his might:
      He did his very best to make
      The billows smooth and bright —
      And this was odd, because it was
      The middle of the night.

      Doubly sexist. First, “sun” = son, but also “he/his.” But perhaps more is wrong?

      1. Ranger Rick

        Not unscathed. The Encyclopedia Britannica goes out of its way to emphasize in the biography of the author that his relationship to the children he was telling stories to was perfectly chaste and supervised by a governess, and that “The book is not an allegory; it has no hidden meaning or message, either religious, political, or psychological, as some have tried to prove . . .”

          1. Jorge

            Ha! I, too, have this tome. I plowed through it once and thought it was a result of a speed bender, like PKD’s books.

            I also have another super-rare tome: the NYPD’s annual “100 worst mafia guys” yearbook from the late 1970s. One of them is Frank Serpico.

        2. Harold

          Lewis Carroll was a friend of George McDonald. Both were Social Gospel /Christian socialists (as was E Nesbit, whose works were coopted for Tory principles by C. S. Lewis). I have seen the Jabberwocky interpreted as personifying the industrialism that threatens childhood. In Tenniel’s illustration it is wearing a waistcoat — and possibly spats.

      2. Psalamanazar

        By Cruikshank, do you mean Tenniel? You will need to do something to multi-gender that neuter pronoun in ‘because it was …’.

    2. nippersdad

      I have long had a tortured relationship with The Wind In The Willows. I can remember when I was a kid asking how a mole could saddle a horse. The writing is beautiful, but the proportions are offputting. Having reread it recently, I can honestly say that frogs wearing washerwomen’s dresses, rather than just sitting in their pockets, still bothers me immensely, but at no time would I have ever thought it my place to “fix” the author’s work to reflect my obvious problems with it.

      And why were the horses forced to drag around various miniscule field creatures instead of just stomping on them unawares? How does a frog afford a car? That whole thing sounds a very Orwellian note of “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others” as they are all sitting around eating fried chicken. One snake would have ended that storyline early…..Etc., etc., etc.

      That is just a very distressing book, but it is not up to anyone else to change it.

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        > How does a frog afford a car?

        Because it’s an imagined world, much like the 100-acre wood (also illustrated by Shephard). C.S. Lewis also has “talking animals.”

        1. nippersdad

          His imagined world has just always tested my ability to suspend reality. As a child talking to stuffed animals or animals talking never phased me, but rats with yachts is a high bar, indeed.

  6. Tom Stone

    Has anyone else noticed how provocative the Biden Admin has been at home?
    I expect that between the 38MM cut off of foodstamps, the end of the child tax credit and 15MM cut off of medicaid we might see enough Civil unrest to justify the Domestic Terrorism Bill Brandon has wanted for so long.
    I’m sure the FBI and Fusion Centers can help with this.
    Including civil asset forfeiture like the RESTRICT Act does.
    And then of course firearms confiscation to help keep the Children safe…..first with assault type weapons like the Remington Model 8 and then sniper type rifles that are so powerful they can kill at half a mile.

    1. Jason Boxman

      When did Biden start confiscation? I must have missed that in all the news of the year. Thanks.

    2. fresno dan

      TS
      If Reagan had done this, I really think there would have been riots.
      Are the two parties even pretending to differ on the policy objective of survival of the richest?

    3. griffen

      It’s the best of times! Come on, man, it’s absolutely the best economy in like 50 years. Just ignore those pesky inflation fear-mongers. I say in two words or less, America is back. \sarc

      Biden is the best President, according to the Bette Midler and Rob Reiner card carrying fan club.

    4. Lou Anton

      And however many millions that have to start repaying student debt in August/September.

      1. Tvc15

        Most progressive president evah, and next FDR as I recall they were telling us at beginning of his administration.

        I remember his bald-faced lies when Bernie tried to corner him for his documented advocacy to cut social security during the debate. Its not really a debate when you can say whatever you want with impunity.

  7. Screwball

    Just for kicks I went to the CNN homepage. Oh my! Wall to wall Trump, which I expected. But it was also like the OJ Bronco chase – helicopters following every move – timelines to the court, you name it. There were protesters, supporters, and a few kooks as well, lining the route.

    I guess all the people who hate the guy with every inch of their body love this stuff, and are probably tuned in like lasers. Personally, I don’t give one good hooey since I have no use for any of them, but isn’t this just a bit over the top?

    I’m sure this is about clicks for the networks, but it’s also for show, it seems. Is all this really necessary? They have successfully turned politics into a sporting event for so many.

    Franky, I find it all disgusting, repugnant, and stupid. If I could I would move out of this insane country, I would.

    3. Dr. John Carpenter

      Politics, at least in the US, has long been pro-wrestling with uglier and flabbier participants. This story-line needs a pay off, the faithful been hearing “the walls are closing in” for so long and TPTB are desperate to write the Trump character out of the show. So yeah, this is all very necessary. My interest only extends to seeing how they manage to screw it up this time, but the outcome doesn’t matter either way.

      1. digi_owl

        The PMC was so convinced after Obama got elected that USA had moved beyond materialism, after all they themselves were living a life of Amazon delivered opulence, that when Trump got elected on a rust belt MAGA spiel vs “madam president” Clinton their whole reality shattered like a broken bathroom mirror.

        1. flora

          It’s not that T did much for the working class, but he at least didn’t ignore them and call them names. He seemed to have an idea about the issues important to them. Unlike the “America is already great. We’re the experts and we know.” crowd.

          1. digi_owl

            And that is why he didn’t get re-elected, as people learned that he was effectively all hot air.

            But the PMCs need to see him drawn and quartered, and thus here we are.

            1. ambrit

              There is no better way to inject new life into an extant movement than to give it a martyr. In days of yore, such shenanigans could be indulged in and the effects could be managed. There was a built in time lag between fell action and outraged response. Thus, unhelpful responses could be managed. Today, the news cycle is almost into the predictive realm. Things can be suppressed, but not completely hidden.
              The best thing that China et. al. could do is to establish a parallel social media scene from which “inconvenient” news could be disseminated. Oh, wait…..
              and thus, the battle is begun.

              1. Keith Howard

                This is very apt. Remember John Brown. Although he was a very ineffective terrorist, he turned out to be a superlative martyr. But there was a real cause at issue (abolition.) It’s hard to see what cause might benefit from Trump, whose chief/only objective is to be the center of attention. Antaeus/earth = Trump/attention. We’ve had a pretty good demonstration of deliberate blackout (Sy Hersh,) so it can be done. If the PTB really wanted to get rid of Trump, he would get the silent treatment.

                1. caucus99percenter

                  Trump: martyr to the cause of abolishing mental and economic slavery to the Deep State?

                2. ambrit

                  The problem is that Trump is a very public challenge to the PMC’s power and legitimacy. Thus, he must be seen being humbled. That would validate the PMC’s privilege and authority. It is like the aphorism about the Law; “The Law must be seen to be working.”
                  As long as there is any pushback against the “Official Narrative,” one can claim that there is a Dialogue possible. When such pushback is forestalled, we devolve into Monologue.
                  Today’s PMC has entered some sort of end stage. It is now adopting “Magical Thinking” and thus is increasingly vulnerable to shocks generated by “Objective Reality.” The Poor and the ‘Deplorables’ know this instinctively. Hunger and physical privation are not amenable to exhortation and the Dialectic. An empty belly sharpens and focuses the mind wonderfully.

            2. flora

              Needing to see their opponent drawn and quartered makes the PMC class the bigger problem, imo. “In victory, vengence.” (That’s not how the line goes…) / ymmv

            3. Pat

              And the hot air attached to Biden along with the obvious malicious prosecutions will get Trump re-elected.

              Especially since some of those who voted for him the first time rightfully believe that Trump’s biggest crime to those going after him wasn’t beating Hillary but giving a nod to the decimation of the middle and working class and showing the world that millions of people weren’t really eating the dog food as if punishing him will erase that.

      2. lyman alpha blob

        For the last seven or eight years my theory has been that Trump has been playing ‘reality show’ (rather brilliantly judging by the attention he’s received) while the political class still thinks he’s playing politics, badly.

        With this latest dump of stupid, I’m starting to wonder if the Democrat party has been in on the kayfabe all along to get some eyeballs themselves. I mean, how else would anyone have ever noticed Adam Schiff, to name just one example, and now this Bragg fellow? I smell a lucrative book deal, even if this does ruin his legal career.

        1. JBird4049

          The entire American political system has been doing the kayfabe on everyone one else, but they are falling for their own kayfabing. Truly, yet another step into our collective American in Wonderland, here.

    4. griffen

      Man, that sideshow in the middle of June 1994 was something. It’s a white Bronco just driving along the freeway, and then all heck is breaking loose. Today I watched a little of the coming and going, saw Trump enter and then reportedly he left in his multi-unit vehicular detail.

      I was anticipating a reprise of the William Wallace scene in a couple leg cuffs, shuffling to the stage for his very public defenestration. Alas, not this time.

      2. some guy

        I remember turning on the TV in the middle of that bronco chase with just minute after minute of silent footage on the screen and me not knowing what it was because I had tuned in in the middle. They I turned to CSPAN which had its normal usual content . . . which I then started watching.

        I remember Brian Lamb later saying with pride that CSPAN had not aired one single minute or even one single second of the white bronco chase.

      3. jimme

        It’s a white Bronco just driving along the freeway…

        Trump missed a big opportunity. He could have found an old white Bronco and rode in it all the way from Florida to New York with an entourage of Secret Service following along.

    5. rowlf

      Meh. More Democratic Party blue balls while hoping to tank Trump. “A(nother) tale told by an…” whatever.

      (The news coverage, not your comment Screwball.)

    6. The Rev Kev

      ‘the OJ Bronco chase’

      Had the same exact thought myself and as I type this they are showing his motorcade back in Florida lie it was the second appearance of JC. It’s nuts – and it was the Democrats which made the whole thing possible. Some Tweets from DoctorFishBones-

      “Indicting Trump is a good political strategy” thinks the brain trust that blew up the Nordstream pipeline

      “The Walls are Closing in on Donald Trump” enters its seventh season

      Democrats: “TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP OMG WOULD PEOPLE PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP STOP TALKING ABOUT TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP”

      Democrats, today: “OMG, Trump is on TV again! NO! Booo! I’m tired of hearing about him! Booo!”

  8. Jason Boxman

    The horror continues:

    Midjourney relies on a neural network, which learns its skills by analyzing enormous amounts of data. It looks for patterns as it combs through millions of digital images as well as text captions that describe the images depict.

    When someone describes an image for the system, it generates a list of features that the image might include. One feature might be the curve at the top of a dog’s ear. Another might be the edge of a cellphone. Then, a second neural network, called a diffusion model, creates the image and generates the pixels needed for the features. It eventually transforms the pixels into a coherent image.

    Companies like Runway, which has roughly 40 employees and has raised $95.5 million, are using this technique to generate moving images. By analyzing thousands of videos, their technology can learn to string many still images together in a similarly coherent way.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/technology/runway-ai-videos.html

    1. digi_owl

      It feels like the next dark age will not be from data loss, but from a loss of creativity.

      Instead there will be a endless row of autogenerated Marvel movies with the same dead actors performing the same canned oneliners across decades.

      There will be no past, and no future, just a numb present.

      1. Jason Boxman

        We’ve always been at war with Eurasia. And now we can seamlessly redo every movie ever to erase history.

          1. ambrit

            Greedo was just arbitraging an information asymmetry. Look where that got him. The Market in action.

  9. fresno dan

    I posted this yesterday intending it for the watercooler because it has that special watercooler je ne sais quoi but as there was no watercooler yesterday, here it is again.
    The silver lining: without the Trump indictment, I never would have known this

    fresno dan
    April 3, 2023 at 6:03 pm
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/when-president-ulysses-s-grant-was-arrested-for-speeding-in-a-horse-drawn-carriage-180981916/#:~:text=When%20President%20Ulysses%20S.%20Grant,in%20a%20Horse%2DDrawn%20Carriage&text=March%2031%2C%202023%203%3A27%20p.m.&text=When%20police%20officer%20William%20Henry,issued%20the%20president%20a%20warning.

    When police officer William Henry West pulled over Ulysses S. Grant for speeding in a horse-drawn carriage on the streets of Washington, D.C. in 1872, he issued the president a warning. The very next day, however, West caught Grant in the midst of another race with his friends.

    Looking like “a schoolboy who had been caught in a guilty act by his teacher,” as West recalled to the Evening Star in 1908, Grant reportedly asked, “Do you think, officer, that I was violating the speed laws?” Answering in the affirmative, West replied, “I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it, for you are the chief of the nation, and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest.”
    ….
    The Evening Star report is the only detailed account of Grant’s arrest; as the Post notes, “standards of journalism, particularly with quotations, were not as rigorous back then as today, *** so it’s nearly impossible to know whether this is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Still, the fact that Grant was arrested for speeding isn’t in dispute: In 2012, Cathy Lanier, then-head of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, confirmed the story to WTOP, adding that officers “actually stopped and cited” Grant for speeding on three separate occasions.
    =================================================
    as today *** ironic or what
    speeding tickets for horse drawn carriages??? who knew?

    1. The Rev Kev

      I had an ancestor booked for that charge back about the 1820s – and the charge was “riding furiously” down a main street in his wagon. Came across similar stories in newspapers in that era so it was apparently a thing.

      1. ambrit

        Hey, it’s a thing, cops and public streets. One of my uncles, lives in Oxford, UK, was cited for riding his bicycle back home from the local while drunk.

  10. Revenant

    The Wind *in* the Willows

    My joint favourite book along with The Just So Stories, before I could read. My mother recounts darkly how I would wake up early and hit her over the head with one of them repeatedly saying “Read, Mummy, read!”. And they were thick tomes!

    I was always very taken with incorrigible Toad and his enthusiasms for things. He is Boris Johnson. “Poop, poop!”.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > The Just So Stories,

      I loved the Just So stories, and I’n surprised Kipling has not been subject to the gentle ministrations of the successor ideology. Take If:

      If you can keep your head when all about you
      Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
      If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
      But make allowance for their doubting too;
      If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
      Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
      Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
      And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

      My father would occasionally quote the first two lines. Of course, Kipling then goes on to conflate manhood with militarism and then with the British imperial mission, so y-e-e-c-c-c-h-h-h but those first two lines….

      1. JohnA

        The players entrance to centre court at Wimbledon has the lines:
        If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
        And treat those two impostors just the same

        As for Kipling and miitarism, I agree about this but it was written well before the First World War. Kipling used his influence to get his only son a commission in the British Army despite the son being decisively rejected for poor eyesight. His death at the Battle of Loos caused Kipling immense grief and huge regret about this militarism.

        1. Revenant

          Kipling and his oeuvre are much more nuanced than his woke detractors paint them. He knew a thing or two about not fighting a land war in the Kybher….

          I always loved How the Elephant got his Trunk because I was that most insatiably curious child.

          And How the Leopard Got his Spots is not racist, merely “colour-aware”, for the animals and the race of man.

          The Just So stories are quite subversive of Victorian morality stories. The rewards of curiosity (the Elephant’s child), male and female empowerment (the Butterfly that Stamped), integration (the Cat that Walked Alone) and even regular bathing (the Rhinoceros’s Skin) are not always straightforward and desirable.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      Thanks (date 2023).

      So a Capital Stack is sorta like a game of Jenga?

      NOTE * Yves doesn’t like the Big Short IIRC — and I could be wrong — because it doesn’t mention Magnetar, but I think it’s a brilliant piece of movie-making regardless,

    2. notabanker

      Thank you. I’ve worked in FSI for years and never understood mezzanine debt, despite having it explained to me more than once. This is crystal clear.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      Probably. It was Alfred Kahn who, when the Carter Administration forbade him from using the word “recession,” said he would use the word “banana” instead.

      1. some guy

        I am glad to hear that you may at least get back a provisional probationary account on twitter. I see no need to suspect AI as the censor when politically correct wokism by human persons leaves them allergic to satire or sarcasm their own selves.

        1. JBird4049

          Noticed that comedy has been going flat have you? Current American comedy remind me so much of Soviet era comedy with its state censorship and of writers and entertainers doing even very mild comedy around the edges of what was allowed to be said.

          We use to laugh at the censorship by authoritarian regimes back during the Cold War. Hello, us.

          1. Daniil Adamov

            A lot of Soviet comedy films and songs are still extremely popular among Russian-speaking audiences, despite their well-known limitations. Or possibly, in part, because of what the better writers managed to get past the censors. The American situation may be different in that there is no censorship of the Soviet type; Americans are doing it to themselves, pretty much, or so it looks to me.

          2. digi_owl

            Because by now TPTB has discovered they can end run free speech by getting the mob to do the censoring rather than sending g-men around.

            This by effectively leveraging the same social mechanism as the church did with excommunication, and was attempted crudely during the red scare.

            1. JBird4049

              Yes, censorship is still censorship whether it comes from a censorship bureau or from a corporatized Friendly Fascism.

              Actually, if you read American history, most of the censorship starts from the top, but most of the work is done by individuals who “encouraged” right thinking in others. From the pro-slavery mobs that burnt the businesses, particularly newspapers, and attacked their abolitionist owners to the several Red Scares of twentieth century to the pro-IdPol or anti-masking people of now.

              True, it was often aided by men in dark suits, but people readily followed, which is all kinds of depressing.

              I am particularly concerned about the suppression of humor in American media. People are either getting too dour or are too scared about showing thoughtcrimes. I think I am seeing a lot of crimestop, which is often not noticeable due to its often being subconscious done. Even if they are not aware of doing so, people are very good at not seeing what they not supposed to see.

  14. Carolinian

    MOA is back in the saddle today.

    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/04/journalist-spy-or-cyber-front-warrior.html

    As for “blog burnout,” the crowd sourcing of a blog like this one surely helps a bit. This is the only site where I bother to read the comments. Hanging out on the web inevitably means managing the signal/noise ratio of so much material. A blog that encourages thoughtful comments helps with that although undoubtedly other blogs do so as well. But you can only read so much.

    1. digi_owl

      Yeah is he is really providing a nice distraction from all the international setbacks…

  16. marku52

    Somewhat alarmingly, there is a correlation between covid vaccination rates and excess deaths. More highly vaccinated countries show higher excess. And add to that, we really should be seeing a decline in excess deaths, as we just went through a huge excess death event (early covid waves) and should now regress to the mean. That means undershoot for a year or two. (lots of people died earlier than they should have)

    Since we are not regressing to the mean, something serious has occurred. And it could be the vaccines? Or long covid? Probably both. These vaccines are off the charts for serious adverse events. And successive covid infections (which seems to be the new plan) are not good for you…
    https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/03/higher-2021-covid-vaccination-correlates-to-increased-excess-deaths-in-2022.html

    1. kareninca

      The vaccines perhaps, long covid, and damage from covid that is invisible until it isn’t.

      My ultra liberal church has about 20 people in person on a typical Sunday now, mostly without masks. So close to back to normal. But they just announced the planned purchase of an automatic external defibrillator. Since I attend only on zoom, I haven’t heard why. Hmmm. They still have the requirement that anyone who enters the church be not just vaccinated, but in fact “up to date” on vaccines. So why do we now need an AED? For twenty people, once a week?? What are the odds of the thing being needed???? Maybe not what you’d expect????

      1. kareninca

        Just in case you weren’t properly terrified:

        “Summary: Following COVID-19 infection, all subtypes of dementia, irrespective of a person’s previous dementia type, behave like rapidly progressive dementia. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 has a significant impact on cognitive function in patients with preexisting dementia, according to new research, published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease Reports. Patients with all subtypes of dementia included in the study experienced rapidly progressive dementia following infection with SARS-CoV-2.”
        and
        “In addition to finding that that all subtypes of dementia, irrespective of patients’ previous dementia types, behaved like rapidly progressive dementia following COVID-19, the team of investigators found that the line of demarcation between different types of dementia became remarkably blurry post-COVID-19.”
        (https://neurosciencenews.com/covid-19-dementia-22938/)

        A guy in my church went to his mom’s funeral last year. She lived to be a zillion. He is in his 70s; he developed dementia about a year ago and it is progressing fast. I have a relative by marriage who is 60 who just developed early onset dementia.

        I do think that the authors of this study are in denial. I mean, what counts as a “little bit of dementia”? We probably all have a little bit of dementia without knowing it. But if we acknowledged that, we’d have to say that we are all soon going to be progressing fast.

  17. Louiedog14

    Different sort of musical interlude in honor of lost days (although tbh I never met a Deadhead who had any idea what month it was, much less what day)

    Time Warp

    I’ve never met the commentariat here, but wonder if we might resemble some members of the cast?

      1. Revenant

        It’s not Kipling or Grahame but I love this film too. Also subversive but rather more overtly. And, picking up the point about being crowd sourced, the alternative / additional lines spoken by the audience at screenings only enhance it.

        Tim Curry and Richard O’Brien are just about with us but RIP Meatloaf….

  18. griffen

    Real estate and above article on the sale of LA business tower. Lot of discussion early this morning on the CNBC channel, and one property maven, Barry Sternlicht, in particular has been sounding the alarm about commercial real estate and office properties in particular. Let me root around to see if I can find the video from CNBC. I have it clipped below.

    https://www.cnbc.com/video/2023/04/04/inflation-is-going-to-drop-hard-says-starwood-capital-ceo.html

    There is a longer form video available as well. I figure a prominent real estate guy would know how or why commercial property markets are shaping up to be a weak performing segment (which he later speaks to).

  19. Val

    Beat It On Down the Line–Fishing buddies back in the day worked prep at a restaurant that sold a whole lot of onion rings. We loved early “dangerous Dead” (pick your horizon), though were living through the continuing “wheezing catastrophe” Dead phase. Onions were always prepped last and they developed a goal to process all the onions for the day and get them sealed in the tubs during one playing of BIODTL. Usually took two-three. Everyone appreciated the effort and would clear out. So when I hear those tracks I am watching from back of the kitchen: competitive speed-peeling, unrestrained weeping and the flashing steel of stoned yokels eager to toss their aprons and go wet a line…

    And I’m gonna say sycamore, or as the Angles call it, plane tree. Platanus. Lay your hand respectfully upon it, will make you a little more interesting.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > competitive speed-peeling, unrestrained weeping and the flashing steel of stoned yokels

      I keep harping on my workflow, and this is a vivid and correct description.

  20. Daryl

    > “A cough I can’t shake.”

    I myself was sick early last month, my first viral illness since the pandemic started. Strongly mapped to a cold in terms of symptoms and severity, but I also seem to now have a perpetual dry cough. Fortunately, nothing else seems to have happened. So far anyway. It’s fun being in an n=1 experiment where I let all these vaccines and viruses slosh around in my body with very little observability into what they’re doing.

  21. jo6pac

    I for one wish trumpster would have changed to orange jumpsuit, handcuffs, and ankle cuffs. Nobody does theater better than the trumpster. He could have brought in millions more and got few more votes for potus.

    We all know that demodogs will be the big loser in this as they should be.

    1. flora

      Elitist snobs (both parties) can’t stand the idea of a “populist” contender. How dare the unexperts, the uncredentialed, the deplorable people have a candidate they rally behind! heh. / ;)

  22. tevhatch

    Students on Strike. Horrible photo, it would be like taking a photo from the side of Queens Road in Hong Kong instead of along it (though even the 2nd does no justice, it would take a drone video to capture the crowd).

    Victor is a popular English moniker in Hong Kong, but Shi is either Taiwanese Guoyu or Mainland Pinyin for one of several surnames, so I can’t say if Victor should have know better from experience.

  24. Wukchumni

    Mother told me, yes, she told me
    I’d meet politicians like you
    She also told me, “Stay away
    You’ll never know what you’ll catch”
    Just the other day I heard
    Of a President’s falling out
    Some Indictment junk
    That’s going ’round

    Donald’s alright
    2024 is alright
    Times just seem a little weird
    Surrender
    Surrender
    But don’t give yourself away
    Hey, hey

    Whatever happened to all this season’s
    Losers of the 2020 year?
    Every time I got to thinking
    Where’d they disappear?
    But when I woke up, black SUV’s
    Are rolling on Stormy’s opinion
    Rolling in numbers, rack & pinon
    Get those 34 felonies told out

    Donald’s alright
    2024 is alright
    Times just seem a little weird
    Surrender
    Surrender
    But don’t give yourself away
    Hey, hey
    Away
    Away

    Surrender, by Cheap Trick

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbkypX1OhZ0

  25. Old Sarum

    Seismic Event in RL

    I suppose RL is “real-life” but as I am apt to take things literally I assume that “Geology Hub” will be covering it on YT: https://youtu.be/QWeCg0Tn_FE

    nb If he is wrong about Yellowstone things could get “interesting”.

    Pip-pip!

  26. some guy

    Here is a video titled . . . ” Uber driver tells passenger to wear a facemask. She refuses and curses at him. In response Uber retaliated against the driver and deactivated his account ” . We get to see the Uber driver seeking to protect himself against a potential Typhoid Mary Covid Zombie passenger who decides to get spiteful and hateful about a pro-health request. And so Uber de-activated the pro-health driver’s account.
    If other pro-health Uber drivers find out about this, they may question their continued involvement with the Typhoid Mary pro-Covid anti-Health company known as ” Uber “.

    Here is the link.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/12bnig4/uber_driver_tells_passenger_to_wear_a_facemask/

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