By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Readers, if you planted anything on Memorial Day, I hope that went well. –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Eastern Phoebe, Spruce Run Recreation Area, Hunterdon, New Jersey, United States. “Singing above boat rental.”
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Google Search’s internal engineering documentation has leaked (!), and — hold onto your hats, folks — they’ve been lying a lot.
(2) Closing arguments from the defense in Judge Merchan’s court.
(3) Bookcases have amazing UI/UX.
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
Less than a half a year to go!
Not a good week for Team Trump, with most of the Swing States (more here) Brownian-motioning themselves toward Biden. Not, however, Michigan, to which Trump paid a visit, nor crucial Pennsylvania. Of course, it goes without saying that these are all state polls, therefore bad, and most of the results are within the margin of error. Now, if either candidate starts breaking away in points, instead of tenths of a point…. NOTE I changed the notation: Up and down arrows for increases or decreases over last week, circles for no change. Red = Trump. Blue would be Biden if he were leading anywhere, but he isn’t.
* * * Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Trump attorney hammers Michael Cohen in hush money closing arguments: Live updates” [The Hill]. “Todd Blanche concluded his closing argument by giving jurors 10 reasons the attorney said should give them reasonable doubt of Trump’s guilt. Among other arguments, Blanche said there was no evidence Trump had an intent to defraud and that Cohen was the ’embodiment’ of reasonable doubt. The jury was then dismissed for their lunch break, though the partie\\s are debating a legal issue before they leave.” • So the headline is not accurate (and would have implied that Blanche was table-pounding and grand-standing, which in turn would mean that Bragg’s architecture and theory of the case are solid, which would be bad news for Trump.
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan) “Closing arguments underway at Trump hush money trial” [Politico]. Five of the 10 reasons (and sheesh, if your humble blogger were live-bloggging this, you’d have all ten, WTF):
- Prosecutors failed to link Cohen’s creation of invoices (for his hush money reimbursements) to Trump himself.
- The National Enquirer was prepared to run some unflattering stories about Trump despite a purported conspiracy to protect his candidacy.
- Trust issues with Cohen mean jurors can’t trust the recordings he provided.
- There’s no evidence Trump sought to illegally influence the 2016 election.
- Michael Cohen is “the human embodiment of reasonable doubt.”
Anna Bower of Brooking’s creature Lawfare does give the ten reasons, in a thread that starts here, Here’s the first part:
I loathe Lawfare, both capitalized and lower-case, but I don’t think they make sh*t up, so I feel I can discount their coverage appropriately.
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan) “CNN legal expert says idea of Trump being acquitted in hush money case is ‘out of reach'” [CNN]. “‘This was a winnable case. It still is not a slam dunk, in my view, having been there every day for the prosecution,’ Eisen said in a CNN interview with Jim Acosta on Monday. ‘I think the odds of conviction are somewhere upwards of 80 percent.’ ‘In part because of this scattershot approach, the defense is not really gunning for an acquittal. That’s out of reach here,’ he continued. ‘What they are hoping for is one angry juror.’ ‘Whether there’s one juror who either feels sympathy for Trump or just for whatever reason does not follow the evidence and the law. The holdout,’ the expert added. ‘That’s what they’re trying for. Just one.” • Of course, Eisen would say this. Again, IANAL, but if the “object offense” has actually been in the indictment, perhaps the defense would have been able to prepare something other than a “scattershot approach.”
* * * Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Merchan and Bragg Fashion a Vague Fraud Instruction to Convict Trump” [Andrew McCarthy, National Review]. “It deals with the central issue of fraud, and it is fleshed out in a “red-line” draft exercise Merchan directed, in which the parties sought to narrow disputes by providing the court with a draft that indicated what proposed instructions they agreed and disagreed on. There, the following is offered to define the central concept of intent to defraud. Unless I am missing something, I don’t see any indication of an objection by the defense to this language: “In order to prove an intent to defraud, the People need not prove that the defendant acted with the intent to defraud any particular person or entity. A general intent to defraud any person or entity — including the government or the voting public — suffices.”… But implicit in that is that fraud, as originally understood, is a deceptive scheme to deprive people of money or tangible property — concrete assets…. As I detailed a year ago when the Supreme Court threw out two federal political-corruption convictions of cronies of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, a serious problem arises when politicians — generally, progressive politicians — attempt to stretch the concept of fraud in order to impose their vision of good governance. They do this by transmogrifying the concrete-property objective of fraudsters into a vague intangible interest in honesty. This can get so vague that, in essence, prosecutors begin indicting (pardon the tautology) deceptive schemes to be deceptive — i.e., cases in which no one was actually bilked out of anything concrete, or even targeted to be so bilked, but the fraud is said to be some artifice that produced a result the prosecutor doesn’t like… Thus does the footnote supporting the proposed fraud instruction elaborate that ‘in the electoral context,’ New York’s highest court has ‘recognized that the concept of fraud can encompass any deliberate deception (to be committed upon the electorate),’ or any ‘corrupt act to prevent a free and open election.’ This is way too broad. There still has to be fraud — meaning the design to steal something in which people have a concrete interest.” • Deeply ironic that the political party of RussiaGate, the political party of Hunter Biden’s laptop, would get all pious about “corrupt act to prevent a free and open election” — and turn them into felonies, no less. As I keep saying: How is this different from normal campaigning?
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “The Closing: Trump’s Final Argument Must Be Clarity to Chaos in Merchan’s Courtroom” [Jonathan Turley]. “Even a cursory review of the evidence shows this case does not have a leg to stand on. “The dead misdemeanor that is the foundation for this entire prosecution requires the falsification of business records. It is not clear that there was such falsification or that Trump has any knowledge or role in any falsification. Witnesses testified that Trump would sign checks prepared by others and that the specific checks in this case were signed while Trump was serving as president. Some of these checks, labeled ‘legal expenses,” were allegedly for attorney Michael Cohen to pay off Stormy Daniels. Most importantly, Jeffrey McConney, the Trump Organization’s retired controller and senior vice-president, testified that it was not Trump who designated these payments as ‘legal expenses.’ Rather, the corporation used an ‘antiquated’ drop-down menu where any payments to lawyers were designated ‘legal expenses.’ … The government also cites the designation of payments to Cohen as part of his ‘retainer,’ which included reimbursement for the payment of the Daniels non-disclosure agreement. However, that designation was the result of discussions between Cohen and former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who is sitting in a jail cell in New York City. The government could have called Weisselberg, but did not.” And: “The government must also show that any falsification was done to further or conceal another crime. This is where the defense needs to bring greater clarity to its own narrative. Trump’s team needs to drive home that a non-disclosure agreement is common in political, business and entertainment circles. The payment of money to quash a story before an election is neither unlawful nor unusual. Indeed, Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels’ attorney, described the NDA as routine and said that it was not hush money but a simple contractual transaction: ‘It wasn’t a payoff. It wasn’t hush money. It was consideration.’… Merchan has allowed the jury to repeatedly hear of “election violations,” while blocking a legal expert to explain that there is no federal election law violation. The payment of hush money is not a campaign contribution and, again, the federal government not only declined to bring any criminal charge, but found no basis for even a civil fine.” This is fair, but the state law (§ 17-152, see next item) that could also be the object offense requires only “conspir[ing] to promote or prevent the election of any person by unlawful means” which doesn’t equate to a campaign contribution. More: “The entire basis for the alleged criminal intent is Michael Cohen, a disbarred lawyer and serial perjurer…. Cohen’s lack of credibility and his admitted financial interest in attacking Trump only highlight again the absence of Weisselberg, whom Cohen references repeatedly as the key person making decisions on how these payments were made and described. If what Cohen said was true, corroboration was sitting a car ride away in Rikers Island. Traffic may be bad but it is not that bad. The only reason not to call Weisselberg was that he would contradict Cohen.”
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “What Must Prosecutors Prove in Trump’s NY Trial?’ [Lawfare]. From May 7, and worth a read again. Key point: “While the indictment alleges no conspiracy, as Bove correctly mentioned, Bragg charged Trump under New York Penal Law § 175.10, falsifying business records in the first degree, a felony “stepped up” from the misdemeanor charge under § 175.05, by alleging that Trump cooked the books with the “intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof.” Justice Merchan has permitted the prosecution to pursue three theories related to that underlying crime, known as the object offense, but the prosecution seems to be zeroing in so far on one, in particular: New York Election Law § 17-152, a misdemeanor offense that prohibits ‘conspir[ing] to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.’ As Steinglass said in court on April 23, ‘while it’s true that there is no conspiracy in the second degree charge on the indictment, it is not true that a conspiracy has not always been alleged to be part of this case.'” • So Trump keeps getting accused of things — e.g., insurrection on January 6, but here conspiracy — that nobody ever charges him with. If he did it, why not charge him? IANAL, but this goes over my head.
* * * Trump (Bragg/Merchan) “Another Violation of Trump’s Constitutional Rights in the Bragg Case” [National Review]. Worth reading on the “conspiracy.” But this: “[NMI/National Enquirer’s David] Pecker testified to two supposed legal admissions of guilt. One was a non-prosecution agreement between Pecker and the Justice Department, which was premised upon the theory that AMI paying McDougal was a campaign expense of the Trump campaign and should have been reported as such. Note that this was not even a formal admission of guilt, let alone a judicial precedent on the highly debatable legal theory that the payment was covered by the federal campaign-finance laws. The other thing Pecker testified about was a fine paid by AMI to the Federal Election Commission. But here’s the key fact: It wasn’t Pecker who decided to pay the fine. He had already left the company. It was the AMI board that made that decision. It did so for business reasons anyone could understand: The company was trying to sell the Enquirer, and businesses routinely pay all manner of settlements to get legal controversies out of the way (even bogus ones) when they’re trying to do a merger or sale of a business. I once worked on a case where a company paid six times the statutory maximum fine — six times what it could possibly have been forced to pay if convicted at trial — just so it could get a merger done. Why does it matter that Pecker wasn’t involved in that decision? Because the decision to pay the fine was evidence used against Trump at his criminal trial. That, in practical effect, made AMI a witness against Trump. The prosecution was effectively using Pecker to admit, on behalf of AMI, that AMI broke the law. But Pecker can’t be cross-examined about something he didn’t do. Neither AMI as an entity, nor its board, was called as a witness, so Trump was denied the right to cross-examine AMI about why it paid the $180,000 fine. That’s a violation of Trump’s rights under the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause. Since Crawford v. Washington (2004), the Supreme Court has cracked down on the use of out-of-court statements by people who aren’t called as witnesses, because the Constitution guarantees the right of the accused in every criminal case “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.'” • Interesting argument. Can legal mavens in the readership comment?
* * * Trump (R) (Cannon/Smith) “Cannon chastises Smith team, denies ‘gag order’ request in Trump classified docs case” [The Hill]. “Judge Aileen Cannon chastised special counsel Jack Smith’s team Tuesday after she said they failed to meaningfully reach out to former President Trump’s attorneys on a motion to limit his speech in the classified documents case after Trump claimed law enforcement had the power to assassinate him. She likewise denied a motion from Trump’s legal team seeking to censure prosecutors over the matter. Smith’s team filed a late Friday motion asking Cannon to clarify that false claims from Trump violated his existing conditions of release after he said President Biden and the Justice Department were authorized to ‘take me out’ during the search for documents at Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors — who like Trump’s team are required to confer with the other party before filing motions in the case — did not do so until 5:30 p.m. ahead of Memorial Day weekend. ‘The Court finds the Special Counsel’s pro forma ‘conferral’ to be wholly lacking in substance and professional courtesy,’ Cannon wrote. ‘It should go without saying that meaningful conferral is not a perfunctory exercise. Sufficient time needs to be afforded to permit reasonable evaluation of the requested relief by opposing counsel and to allow for adequate follow-up discussion.” • Smith is being childish. Come on.
* * * Trump (R): “Eyeing Trump, but on the Fence: How Tuned-Out Voters Could Decide 2024” [New York Times]. “Politically disengaged Americans are emerging as one of the most unpredictable, complex and potentially influential groups of voters in the 2024 race. They are fueling Mr. Trump’s current polling leads but in many cases hail from traditionally Democratic communities, giving Mr. Biden a chance to win some of them back.” Reaching them is a problem: “In a presidential election in which more than 80 percent of voters, according to a Pew Research Center survey, say they wish one or both major candidates were not running, some are opting out of straight-ahead political news entirely… ‘When your team’s losing, you don’t read the sports page after the game,’ said Ken Goldstein, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. ‘You have a big swath of the country that just thinks they’re losing when it comes to politics, and so the way to deal with that is to just not pay attention.'” • And are they wrong? See Ferguson and Storm here. Spoiler: They’re not wrong.
* * * Biden (D): “Dems in full-blown ‘freakout’ over Biden” [Politico]. “A pervasive sense of fear has settled in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects, even among officeholders and strategists who had previously expressed confidence about the coming battle with Donald Trump. All year, Democrats had been on a joyless and exhausting grind through the 2024 election. But now, nearly five months from the election, anxiety has morphed into palpable trepidation, according to more than a dozen party leaders and operatives. And the gap between what Democrats will say on TV or in print, and what they’ll text their friends, has only grown as worries have surged about Biden’s prospects. ‘You don’t want to be that guy who is on the record saying we’re doomed, or the campaign’s bad or Biden’s making mistakes. Nobody wants to be that guy,’ said a Democratic operative in close touch with the White House and granted anonymity to speak freely. But Biden’s stubbornly poor polling and the stakes of the election ‘are creating the freakout,’ he said. • Idea: Let’s help out Big Z by building a pier in Ukraine. Maybe if we build a pier on dry land, it will be easier.
* * *
Our Famously Free Press
“Washington Post sat on Alito upside-down flag interview for years” [Axios]. “It turns out that The Post’s former Supreme Court reporter, Bob Barnes, did a front-yard interview with Justice Samuel Alito on Jan. 20, 2021 — President Biden’s inauguration day — about the upside-down American flag that had flown outside the justice’s home in Fairfax County, Va. The Post decided it wasn’t a story, until The New York Times broke the news on May 16 — 3 years, 4 months later. The flag — which Alito attributed to his wife, Martha-Ann Alito — raised ethics questions that were heightened after The Times reported last week on a second provocative flag flown at an Alito property.” • From the entire story, it looks like the “signal of distress” flag is down to Martha-Ann Alito, who sounds a bit shrill; but the second flag, the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, looks to me like an open endorsement of a political faction,
Syndemics
“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
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); 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 (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Infection
“Triple threat: The winter viruses you can get at the same time” [The New Daily]. The source is from Australia, where it’s winter. “In the first three months of 2024, there were three times as many confirmed Covid-19 cases as influenza cases. This means that there’s a lot more of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (which causes Covid-19) circulating in the community than influenza. Worse, the death rate associated with Covid-19 was about four times as high as for influenza. This may even out a little over winter, but Covid-19 will likely remain the biggest threat of you becoming seriously ill. On the other hand, RSV is an extremely common respiratory disease among small children. It’s highly infectious, and yet not top of mind. It’s not as lethal as flu or Covid, but it can get very nasty for the very young, old and those in between with lung issues.” • Australia, then, is in the grip of a syndemic. Meanwhile, it’s beyond stupid for the United States to believe that Covid is over when it’s rising in other countries that have air connections to the United States.
Sequelae: Covid
“Long COVID and cardiovascular disease: a prospective cohort study” [BMJ]. N = 2545. From the Discussion: “In this prospective observational study of hospitalised COVID-19 survivors in the UK fewer than one in three patients with cardiovascular comorbidities or at high risk of developing [cardiovascular disease (CVD)] had complete patient perceived physical, mental and cognitive recovery up to 1 year
following SARS-CoV-2 infection. The profound functional deterioration and lower quality of life that have been previously reported at 5 months persist at 1 year, particularly for those with established CVD or with cardiovascular risk factors.” You can’t spell “Covid” without “C, V, D”!
Origins Debate
Daszak’s EcoHealth, looked at simply as an institution (an NGO that raised money by snagging grants) was rotten to the core. Now it looks like the NIH, one of its grantors, was just as rotten. This is astonishing:
Why was Fauci’s Chief-of-Staff intentionally misspelling keywords in emails? Not just typos but using special characters (ex. Ec~Health, Anders$n, etc). https://t.co/YNn1AMFWTB
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) May 28, 2024
Crafting emails to avoid FOIA? Really? What possible good motive for that can there be? And how far back does the rot go? As far back as Fauci’s conduct in the AIDS crisis?
Celebrity Watch
Modeling good behavior:
If the paparazzi can tell this is Robert Pattinson, there is absolutely no reason for there to be a ban on masks, for medical use, anywhere. https://t.co/u05z74OZlt
— Lost in a Dystopian Hell written by AI Monkeys (@lsthart) May 26, 2024
‘Tis a mystery (1):
Neil Young's Chicago show postponed at last minute 'due to illness' https://t.co/2C5QfdKLHG
— Jess (@MeetJess) May 25, 2024
‘Tis a mystery (2):
Bruce Springsteen Cancels Show in Marseille, France "Unable to Sing and Perform" https://t.co/fj28l4RXEl
— Jess (@MeetJess) May 25, 2024
‘Tis a mystery: “Novak Djokovic suffers sixth defeat this year and admits he may struggle at French Open” [The Telegraph]. The deck: “World No.1 at a loss to explain poor form with Roland Garros defence looking even tougher after Geneva Open defeat.”
Elite Maleficence
“Covid will still be here this summer. Will anyone care? [WaPo]. No, since the propaganda campaign supporting a population cull has been Goebbelsian in its intensity and immersiveness. “This is shaping up to be the first covid wave with barely any federal pressure to limit transmission and little data to even declare a surge. People are no longer advised to isolate for five days after testing positive. Free tests are hard to come by. Soon, uninsured people will no longer be able to get coronavirus vaccines free…. So we’re left with a virus that continues to hum in the background as an ever-present pathogen and sporadic killer. The public health establishment no longer treats covid as a top priority. Only a smattering of passengers still wear masks on trains and planes. Weddings, vacations and conferences carry on as normal. Many who do get sick won’t ever know it’s covid. Or care…. The CDC and health authorities continue to promote the coronavirus vaccine, last updated in fall 2023 for a subvariant no longer in circulation, as the best form of protection against the disease…. In April, hospitals stopped reporting confirmed covid-19 cases – ending the most commonly cited metric for measuring the virus’s toll. The CDC still tracks the levels of coronavirus detected in wastewater and discloses the percentage of emergency room visits with a diagnosed covid-19 case, which has been declining since February. But Hotez said the available metrics are no longer enough to properly grasp the covid situation.” This is perhaps the best quote: “Many summer campers, for instance, will no longer be forced to isolate for covid while asymptomatic since the CDC revised its quarantine protocols to allow people to reemerge after their fevers break, said Tom Rosenberg, president and chief executive of the American Camp Association. ‘Kids [cough cough] can have more fun,’ Rosenberg said. ‘We want to keep them in camp as much as we can as long as they are well and ready to participate.'” • No doubt! Nothing would please me more than to learn/accept the Covid pandemic was over. Nothing official — not the data, and certainly not behavior — convinces me that it is. Change my mind!
Lambert here: Patient readers, I’m going to have to rethink this beautifully formatted table. Biobot data is gone, CDC variant data functions, ER visits are dead, CDC stopped mandatory hospital data collection, New York Times death data has stopped. (Note that the two metrics the hospital-centric CDC cared about, hospitalization and deaths, have both gone dark). Ideally I would replace hospitalization and death data, but I’m not sure how. I might also expand the wastewater section to include (yech) Verily data, H5N1 if I can get it. Suggestions and sources welcome. UPDATE I replaced the Times death data with CDC data. Amusingly, the URL doesn’t include parameters to construct the tables; one must reconstruct then manually each time. Caltrops abound.
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
Cases | |
❌ National[1] Biobot May 13: | ❌ Regional[2] Biobot May 13: |
Variants[3] CDC May 25 | Emergency Room Visits[4] ❌ CDC March 23 |
Hospitalization | |
New York[5] New York State, data May 24: | ❌ National [6] CDC May 11: |
Positivity | |
★ National[7] Walgreens May 28: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic May 18: |
Travelers Data | |
Positivity[9] CDC May 6: | Variants[10] CDC May 6: |
Deaths[11] | |
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity CDC May 11: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits CDC May 11: |
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (Biobot) Dead.
[2] (Biobot) Dead.
[3] (CDC Variants) FWIW, given that the model completely missed KP.2.
[4] (ER) CDC seems to have killed this off, since the link is broken, I think in favor of this thing. I will try to confirm. UPDATE Yes, leave it to CDC to kill a page, and then announce it was archived a day later. And heaven forfend CDC should explain where to go to get equivalent data, if any. I liked the ER data, because it seemed really hard to game.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Slightly, but distinctly up. The New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and around the country through air travel). So my natural inclination is to see how wastewater at JFK and EWR is doing. CDC, before it decided to butcher wastewater visualization, provided data down to the sewage treatment plant level, so I could check the Brooklyn plant for JFK (and also the Brooklyn plant for LGA). Well, that’s no longer possible, but the Verily [vomits quietly] wastewater site — Biobot being kaput — provides data on EWR. Here it is:
So, New York City Hospitalization up, Covid from air travel up. Make of that what you will. Covid is also up in Singapore and France, you will recall.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC) Still down. “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates weekly for the previous MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Department Visits, Test Positivity) and weekly the following Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”.
[7] (Walgreens) Slight uptick.
[8] (Cleveland) Leveling out.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up and down.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) KP.2 enters the chat, as does B.1.1.529 (with backward revision).
[11] CDC’s data and visualization, still being updated.
Stats Watch
Manufacturing: “United States Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ general business activity index for manufacturing in Texas decreased to -19.4 in May 2024, hitting a new 4-month low.”
Retail: “Amazon Returns Have Gone to Hell” [The Atlantic]. “If you can’t see and touch goods that you’re about to buy, then you don’t ever really know what you’re going to get, and you might be disappointed. Free shipping and returns have helped consumers hedge that risk. But free for you doesn’t mean free for the retailers, which lose a lot of money on restocking and refurbishment. As Amanda Mull wrote for The Atlantic last year, the standard way of selling things online—with the blanket promise You can always send it back!—has become unsustainable. ‘For the first time, companies are making return reductions a priority,’ Jacob Feldman, an associate professor of supply chain, operations, and technology at Washington University in St. Louis, told me… ‘The name of the game now is mitigation: How do we mitigate this crazy number of returns?’ Rogers said. ‘One of the things you could do is put a little more friction in it. They’ll never say returns are going to cost money or not be allowed. But if it’s a little more inconvenient, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.’ In other words, if a return process put customers off just enough to dissuade some returns, but without upsetting the precious idea of free returns, that would be a net benefit for retailers.” Caltrops wherever you look. But the story begins: “After ordering two packs of 11-inch, rope-woven storage cubes from Amazon.com recently, I found that the resulting cubes were, in fact, 11-by-10.5-by-10.5 inches. Alas, they weren’t what I expected. I elected to return both sets.” • So I have to admit — and I never thought this would happen — I have a wee bit of sympathy for Amazon, here. These are “rope-woven storage cubes,” not airplane fuselage parts.
Tech: “An Anonymous Source Shared Thousands of Leaked Google Search API Documents with Me; Everyone in SEO Should See Them” [SparkToro]. “On Sunday, May 5th, I received an email from a person claiming to have access to a massive leak of API documentation from inside Google’s Search division. The email further claimed that these leaked documents were confirmed as authentic by ex-Google employees, and that those ex-employees and others had shared additional, private information about Google’s search operations. Naturally, I was skeptical. …. So, this past Friday, May 24th (following several emails), I had a video call with the anonymous source. After the call I was able to confirm details of their work history, mutual people we both know from the marketing world, and several of their claims about being at particular events with industry insiders (including Googlers)…. During our call, this contact showed me the leak itself: more than 2,500 pages of API documentation containing 14,014 attributes (API features) that appear to come from I reached out to one of the world’s foremost technical SEOs: Mike King, founder of iPullRank. During a 40-minute phone call on Friday afternoon, Mike reviewed the leak and confirmed my suspicions: this appears to be a legitimate set of documents from inside Google’s Search division, and contains an extraordinary amount of previously-unconfirmed information about Google’s inner workings. Based on the document’s commit history, this code was uploaded to GitHub on Mar 27, 2024th and not removed until May 7, 2024th… think of this as instructions for members of Google’s search engine team. It’s like an inventory of books in a library, a card catalogue of sorts, telling those employees who need to know what’s available and how they can get it. But, whereas libraries are public, Google search is one of the most secretive, closely-guarded black boxes in the world. In the last quarter century, no leak of this magnitude or detail has ever been reported from Google’s search division.” • Here is King’s technical review–
Tech: “Secrets from the Algorithm: Google Search’s Internal Engineering Documentation Has Leaked” [Mike King, iPullRank]. “What I’ll do here is contextualize some of the most interesting ranking systems and features (at least, those I was able to find in the first few hours of reviewing this massive leak) based on my extensive research and things that Google has told/lied to us about over the years. ‘Lied’ is harsh, but it’s the only accurate word to use here. While I don’t necessarily fault Google’s public representatives for protecting their proprietary information, I do take issue with their efforts to actively discredit people in the marketing, tech, and journalism worlds who have presented reproducible discoveries.” I’m pressed temporally, so I don’t have time to go into the weeds on this, but here is one snippet: “It’s been a long-running conspiracy theory that Google’s status as a registrar feeds the algorithm. We can upgrade to a conspiracy fact. They store the latest registration information on a composite document level.” • That sounds like just the sort of thing that monopoly mavens like Stoller would be interested in. Does anyone in the readership want to do a deep dive?
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 54 Neutral (previous close: 53 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 60 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated May 28 at 12:33:39 PM ET.
Rapture Index: Closes up one on Floods. “It has been very wet in the US” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 189. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Bird flu not a concern, apparently. And I hate even to go here, but the “Tribulation Temple” category is a mere 3. If Tribulation Temple = Third Temple = whatever temple it is that the Red Heifer loons want to build, then the Rapture Index made the right call, amazingly enough. It said: “Don’t worry about the Red Heifers.”
Book Nook
“The Bookcase as World’s Most Underrated UI” [Miller’s Book Review]. All true:
Digital promises instant retrieval. But it never quite delivers. Searching for a book in a digital environment means scrolling through two-dimensional, sometimes black-and-white thumbnail book covers in hopes of spotting the right title, or worse, scanning line after line of identical-looking, text-only search results.
Book app UIs have improved over the years, but they’re still pretty poor compared to the common bookcase. My bookcases at home, for instance, allow me to display a couple thousand titles at once. They’re organized to my taste, and I can find almost anything in seconds.
Spatial information, color, and design all factor into the search results. When I walk in my study, I know history and period literature is on the left, chronologically arranged, more or less. Business books are straight ahead, arranged by subject. Psychology and art are ahead to the left, philosophy ahead to the right.
When looking for a subject or theme, I can quickly spot a particular book I think will help. By grabbing a few of its neighbors I can find another angle or two. And it’s all visually prompted and tactilely supported, instead of manually keyed and electronically served. I can view the text and design data of a dozen book spines at once, run my finger along their edges and pull this one or that.
Browsing offers additional benefits. I often want one book in particular but realize a moment into scanning the shelves that another book will serve me better. The bookcase offers serendipity in a way digital UIs haven’t yet replicated or surpassed. That’s also true for size. My bookcases run floor to ceiling, wall to wall, on two sides of my study. No phone or desktop can match that display.
Also, books and bookcases don’t go down when the grid goes down,
Class Warfare
“OpenAI and Political Bias in Silicon Valley” [RealClearPolitics]. AI-generated artwork representing both parties, instantly recognizable for the fascistic kitsch that it is. But this sentence caught my eye: “[A]sked to promote careers that don’t require higher education, such as the trades, ChatGPT steadfastly features an image of a graduate at its center.” • ChatGPT is PMC to the core, then. Hence the theft, the lying….
“The Loneliness of the American Worker” [Wall Street Journal]. • It looks like something happened in late 2019/early 2020. I wonder what? Handy chart:
Are we looking at belief scarring?
News of the Wired
“Retiring abroad can mean more bureaucracy than bruschetta. But it’s growing in popularity” [CNN]. “‘Our goal, which is very doable based on research, is to live on less than $3,500 per month in Portugal while still being able to afford travel in Europe,’ said [Laura Barnett}. Their financial adviser told them that to comfortably retire in the US, they’d need to have about double that amount — $7,000 per month.” • As I keep saying, if you (and your family, if any) don’t have a passport, you’re depriving yourself of an option. Of course, if the lunatics around Biden start a nuclear war, you might need to wear a Canadian lapel pin,
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you might need to wear a Canadian lapel pin
Hey, no fair! Besides, you’d have to answer the secret Tim Hortons question correctly.
> the secret Tim Hortons question
Which is?
If I told you, I’d have to …
That’s not a question!
I know what a double double is – does that count?
PS I actually do have a Canadian lapel pin – and a Canadian passport – but have concluded that I am better off staying in the states for health care access reasons – my Canadian cousins tell me I am probably right.
“Our Canadian Cousins.” Wasn’t that the play being staged at Ford’s Theatre when President McClellan was shot by that Arch Unionist actor?
You mean Chrysler’s Theater.
Oh, the one with all of the chrome and fins, blinking lights etc.? I do get them mixed up.
…shoot myself.
“… or the Canadian gets it!”
Indeed. Canadians are very subtle.
I don’t see Cleavon Little wearing his Canadian lapel pin. What gives?
It’s “shoot you”.
Forget it Janie. It’s Canadatown. (Where passive aggressive gets serious!)
That is a nice camellia, and appears to be treated well. My in-laws had over 50 varieties and loved picking them and floating them in a wide bowl, which made bodacious displays. It is a southern thing.
Also like the moss all over the bird bath (?) in the background.
Imo if they convict trump on these charges, and he loses on appeal, they can convict anybody on anything. In that case we have lost any pretense of a system of justice. Maybe that’s already happened given we’re ok with genocide.
“They” can convict anybody for anything for some definition of “they.” Compared to acquiescence to genocide the Trump trial(s) are small beer. DJT has played by his own rules all of his life. Fair or unfair, political or not … and the charges are all political … maybe “they” are simply fed up within his shenanigans, his constant demands for attention, his inciting hints in his rambling word salads purporting to be speeches. Four years of DJT revenging himself on his political enemies and anyone who said nasty things about him is a price I am not at all sure the US can afford. Unfortunately, given the shape of the election to come, we, the people, the deplorables, having not been consulted are faced with a set of bad choices. Makes me miss even Richard Nixon.
I know we really couldn’t afford the almost eight years of the Democrats and status quo punishing Trump for having the audacity of understanding the electoral college and actually campaigning and asking for people’s votes in swing states rather than rolling over when Clinton’s campaign called him nasty names. Unfortunately he was the best of a bad choice in 2016, and got elected.
They don’t ask us much. Personally, I am of the belief that if the Democrats weren’t so hell bent on destroying Trump and anyone who follows him, he would have settled into retirement and we would be looking at Biden vs Haley. Another hideous choice, btw. But so many lawyers, media people, and non profit groups would never have made so much money, and Biden might have to have done something worthwhile. Oh and I don’t think Biden would have walked off into the sunset,what little of him is left enjoys being the 800 lb gorilla no matter how bad he is at it.
I learned to detest Obama when I realized how good he made Nixon look.
Obama did say once that he was to the right of Ronald Reagan.
Aside from the whole DEI insanity, the current Democratic Party is to the right of Nixon, which means that the Republican Party is just insane.
Trump had the “lock her up” thing going in 2016 and Clinton did not get locked up after Trump’s election, nor did he even try. He’s not getting revenge on anybody – it’s just his usual schtick.
I’m hard pressed to find the president currently committing genocide as the lesser of two evils.
Judge Cannon laying down the law to Jack Smith makes for an entertaining read.
When the lawfare is all said and done, I fear we’ll be stunned by the mediocrity of the minds driving this Monty Python style burlesque. Mediocrity being a synonym for banal.
I added orts and scraps. There’s a lot happening today (and Google’s internal documentation being released is a very, very big deal).
“Of course, if the lunatics around Biden start a nuclear war, you might need to wear a Canadian lapel pin,”
That assumes there will anywhere to retire to once Armageddon gets underway.
IIRC the official number of deaths attributed to Covid in the USA during February of this year was 10,000.
It was not a newsworthy number of deaths.
And there’s no count of those who experienced long Covid during that Month.
Imagine the reaction of the MSM if the USA deployed a few divisions in Ukraine and suffered 10,000 KIA in a Month.
Or the reaction if deaths caused by drunk drivers increased by 10,000 in one Month…
How about a death toll of 10K firearms deaths in a Month?
Covid deaths are not newsworthy, because Markets, Go Die.
Between the “let ‘er rip!” people and the “have more babies to solve the demographic crisis” people, I wonder whether there might be an unarticulated intention to breed/select for a strain of coronavirus-resistant humans.
>>> there might be an unarticulated intention to breed/select for a strain of coronavirus-resistant humans.
It certainly would mesh with the 130 plus years and extensive support for eugenics in the United States.
That actually explains a lot I think. Wow. That and reduce retirement and pension obligations.
Given the apparent ability of those “on the spectrum” to display adaptabilty by resisting peer pressure and continuing to mask, which at the population level would translate into reproductive fitness, one might urge that such a selection process is already going on, just in a way that elites would not conceive of and would not prefer.
About those political AI pictures, I notice something that is of far-distantly secondary importance to be sure, but yet it smacked me right in the eye socket. And that was some random mispellings.
For example, in this picture . . .
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/05/28/openai_and_political_bias_in_silicon_valley_151007.html
the slogan ” fiscal responsibility” on the Republican banner is actually spelled . . . ” fiscal responbssility”.
And in this picture . . .
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/05/28/openai_and_political_bias_in_silicon_valley_151007.html
“Democrats” is spelled ” Democratis”.
And in this picture, there is a sign that says ” Soecal Justice” and another sign that says ” Liberal Liber Velules”.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/05/28/openai_and_political_bias_in_silicon_valley_151007.html
And there are some others.
Now, are these mispellings meant to be satirical? Or is this just good old AD ( Artificial Dementia) drooling down its own face as per usual?
It’s AI drooling. Those approximations of English in written form are better than AI usually does; used to me mere scribbles.
LLMs have never been good at writing on pictures. Among many other things.
Heh. My favorite was asking for a six sided die. I got a die with the same number on every visible face, lol. This stuff is gonna takeover the world!
Image models don’t understand language, spelling, grammar or anything like that. They know letters as regular shapes that frequently occur in proximity to other, similar shapes, typically on signs, billboards, posters and the like. If they are generating scenes with those elements, they will sprinkle them with letters in word-like groupings that may bear a passing resemblance to words commonly found in that kind of scene (‘Democratis’). Or they may not use letters at all, but just a collection of lines and angles that resemble writing.
These ones are actually pretty good by AI image standards – ‘progress for all’ in the campaign one, for example. Normally they wouldn’t be even that legible.
Because they are as not as powerful or ‘intelligent’ as people think, they’re very sensitive to input as well. “Careers that don’t require higher education, such as the trades” is a bad prompt, although to a casual user it’s probably not obvious why. Models aren’t particularly good at understanding and parsing negatives, so the “don’t” in here is ignored, and instead the image has a lot of elements associated with higher education. “Working class careers such as the trades” sounds identical to a human but is much more likely to produce the intended results as a prompt.
To the point of the article, models will generally faithfully reproduce whatever bias exists in the training set. This includes both bias present in the included material and bias involved in the choice of what to exclude. If the creators have decided to purge any material on far-right nationalism and neo-Nazi groups, for example, then the model won’t tend to render those – or if it does, it will be based on secondary sources only.
This is helpful; we’re starting to get better information about things like LLM and GPT in the public space as the novelty is wearing off.
But now that its limitations are becoming clear, even if the limitations are only temporary (unlikely) while the technology rockets/lurches forward, the discussion should really move to how it’s being used today. Using it for Google Overview is something akin to information fraud, like a form of consumer fraud. Google (and not just Google) is in the information business; that’s why we go to them. We’re not looking for some kind of WWE information entertainment and it’s not being sold as that either.
If they are in the business of information and instead provide fictional stories/facts/history as true (at least some of the time, with no indication) people will get hurt – and are they/we saying that’s OK? I guess since it’s the same group saying autonomous vehicles are OK, the answer is yes.
Google Overview has the last week been informing about the use of glue in pizza, the benefit of jumping of a cliff if you are depressed and the benefits of eating rocks. I believe the first two were tracked to Reddit comments where shitposting is an old tradition and the last was straight from a headline in The Onion.
Statistical word compilation has its uses, but the bubble and the hype is far out of proportion. There is no intelligence there, just a statistical parrot, and most attempts to have human intelligence replaced by statistical word compilation will just be crapification.
Were possible the damage should be limited by legal and political means. In the case of Google Overview I think a possible path is treating this text as articles published by Google (because they are). They do scrub these when it is pointed out, which probably gets them off the hook for most things in most jurisdictions. Maybe GDPR and similar laws (I understand California has something similar) is a more useful approach as there are personal information sampled and it can’t be removed. If a person’s name was in the dataset it will sometimes pop up, and all Google can do is remove the article after the fact. They will of course claim that there is no database, just an AI, but I doubt it will hold water if placed under scrutiny.
> Models aren’t particularly good at understanding and parsing negatives
Hegel:
I can’t really parse this — perhaps we have a Hegelian in the readership — but it does suggest that the negative is important and that AI, therefore, is missing out. Search seems to have the same issue.
(I always preferred the negative side as a debater, but I don’t think that is the same sort of “negative.”)
Not a Hegelian, but I think it’s the negative that defines the positive (as in the definitely existing, that which is, the 1-rather-than-0) by way of contrast. If so, this is pretty much the thing – models don’t understand what things are and where the boundaries between different things lie.
RE: ‘Tis a mystery
I’m in no way pooh-poohing the sarcasm here, just offering an anecdote. As far as I know I got the rona just once, over a year ago. Terrible chills and sweats one afternoon and evening, symptoms gone by the next morning. Tested positive for the rona though, and then a couple days later lost my sense of smell/taste for about 36 hours, but otherwise fine.
About a month ago after sitting next to someone on a plane who was either ill, seriously tweaking, or both, I got the same chills/sweat symptoms for the same period of time, again gone the next morning, but this time the rona test was negative. So either the rona test was wrong (didn’t lose taste this time though), or it was actually something else. Hearing about a lot of people with a similar something else even though it’s not really flu season now. Not sure how many of these others tested themselves. It would be nice if someone could identify what is going around though so it stops being such a mystery. If it’s something other than the rona, let’s hear it, and if it is the rona, let’s stop pretending it’s all over.
I am a member of an ongoing study that tracks flu and flu-like illnesses (including Covid). I get a weekly graph of study results as part of that, showing exactly what the test results were for anyone in the study population reporting symptoms that week.
If this is an accurate representation of the broader population, then I can say the answer to your question is: it’s everything, all at once. At present here it’s the common cold at #1, followed by Covid and then RSV, a general ‘other’ bucket, and flu bringing up the rear.
It is useful for figuring out exactly what’s behind any respiratory illness peaks that we see, although generally only after the fact, since it takes a few weeks for tests to be gathered and process and the reports to be created and distributed (they’re a useful side effect of the study, rather than its main purpose).
> it’s everything, all at once.
A syndemic.
RE: Bookcase UI
On mine you can find the Xtian bible right next to the Koran and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Telling the commentariat because so far after 20 years, no visitors to my house have gotten the joke. Or maybe did and didn’t appreciate it…
They’re all literary works intended to convey important moral points.
In mine: History of religion, Bible and Koran, then Economy.
In the extremely competitive race to the very bottom of the pond scum puddle, Nikki Haley makes another strong statement. Her touching commemoration of the departed on Memorial Day really brings one to tears.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nikki-haley-signs-her-name-181359506.html
So she is now doing what Mike Pence did a while back when he was in Israel. They both have the same moral values then. Very clarifying.
re: Google leak. Couldst be a knock-on effect of the Gaza/Isr stuff? Just a thought.
From Time Magazine, April 10th.
Exclusive: Google Workers Revolt Over $1.2 Billion Contract With Israel
https://time.com/6964364/exclusive-no-tech-for-apartheid-google-workers-protest-project-nimbus-1-2-billion-contract-with-israel/
and from Gizmodo
https://gizmodo.com/google-fires-more-workers-israel-palestine-protests-1851428722
This seems important
More
https://scheerpost.com/2024/05/28/patrick-lawrence-us-endgame-in-ukraine-war-without-end-amen/
*Sigh*
This has been debunked. Putin himself has said otherwise. And please read closely. The sourcing is terrible.
Putin has said among other things that the West needs to pick up the phone, and he is absolutely not going to accept a ceasefire. Russia kept the war up during the Istanbul talks when Russia was in a more forgiving mood.
Also, Putin himself has said that Kharkov is a “Russian city.” How is he going to walk back from that? Not to mention Odessa.
Truly interesting from Brian Potter–the WW2 US aircraft industry
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-to-build-300000-airplanes-inhttps://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-to-build-300000-airplanes-in
We actually linked to this back on May 24, but I always like it when (presumably) we put a link out into the world, and it rattles around and eventually arrives back in the comments section :-)
“Triple threat: The winter viruses you can get at the same time”
It’s funny this. Funny strange and not funny funny. This is talking about viruses in Oz and while reading it, realized that I cannot recall when the last time I heard Covid mentioned on the TV news and when I think about it, I rarely see it mentioned on Google News Australia anymore. Lying by omission? Or just not “newsworthy”?
> I cannot recall when the last time I heard Covid mentioned on the TV news
Sorry, what was that word?
“Dems in full-blown ‘freakout’ over Biden”
It’s their own fault. Back in 2020 they chose Biden and rammed him down the throats of the voters. Even way back then there were the early onset of dementia going on and for him, it was a blessing that he could campaign from his basement. No such luck this time as he has said that the pandemic is over and now has no reason to avoid large scale rallies. You could argue that the selection of candidates back in 2020 was not very strong to choose from-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_candidates
But that field of candidates was who the Democrats themselves chose to let stand. And in the end they chose the ultimate Washington insider to grab the brass ring, even though he was well past his use-by date. So in the end, the Democrats did it to themselves. All their present problems goes back to 2020 when the insiders decided to make Joe Biden their Great White Hope.
So then, who was the Great Witte Hope? (Did America become an empire as early as McKinley?)
> So then, who was the Great Witte Hope?
Count Witte?
> Did America become an empire as early as McKinley?
Certainly. That is why we went to war with Maine and seized their colony in the Philippines. A cursor search brings up this history: “The American Decision to Go to War with Spain, 1898.” I believe word was “expansionism.” Teddy Roosevelt was one of the prime movers.
I believe you mean “went to war with Spain” or possibly “went to war over the Maine”, but an unknown US war against Maine would certainly be par for the course. I only came across the Utah war (1857-1858) a couple of years ago. Wars that don’t fit larger narratives tend to go unmentioned.
Perhaps he was thinking of the War of Northern Secession back when Maine declared its independence from Massachusetts in 1820. The War of Northern Secession is ridiculed today as “disinformation.” See Zenns Deplorable History of the United States for details.
See: https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/maine-statehood-the-mexit-from-massachusetts-in-1820/
Sorry. Comparing “Creepy” Joe Biden with Count Witte is an insult to the Count. Although both head(ed) Empires. Witte ran the Russian Empire for a bit while Biden still heads a criminal empire.
Agree. So now they are said to be freaking out over Biden’s viability and that voters don’t like him…
Gee, ya think???
And what does it mean “to grab the brass ring” when the party leadership already kicked all the other candidates off the Washington merry-go-round (great pre-code film, by the way)?
Amazon is growing confident that the retail extinction is advanced enough it can force buyers to buy whatever it sells.
What’s described in the excerpt is the first step.
Monopsony purchaser creeping up to be monopoly seller of…everything. TINA, or at least soon won’t be.
> Amazon is growing confident that the retail extinction is advanced enough it can force buyers to buy whatever it sells.
Good point!
Re: “Secrets from the Algorithm: Google Search’s Internal Engineering Documentation Has Leaked”
I scanned this quickly. Mike King has made a pretty good first pass through these leaked API docs. He says up front that it will take more time to digest these, and this strikes me as correct.
For the NC readership, I’m guessing a lot of people would read this with censorship in mind, i.e., looking for the smoking gun that Google is actively censoring search results and how this is being accomplished. I would be surprised, though, if we’re going to find that.
It may be difficult because code is only part of the story — there is of course also data. You can read interfaces, read code, but unless you know what data is being handled by those interfaces, or you can actually use a debugger and see what data is being passed, there’s only so much you can say about the behavior of the system. And we are not going to get to do that, unless some Google employee decides to *cough* open a backdoor and let some tech journos inside.
Parenthetically, I will add that one of the things I do for a living is write API docs. In my experience, many engineers simply can’t be bothered to document APIs, but obviously application devs and other engineers need these docs, even if only of what functions are supposed to do. The whole “read my code” thing is a non-starter but also reality.
So Mike King is diving in as somebody with a lot of knowledge about SEO. He can read these interfaces — e.g., he parses that encodedChardXlqYmylPrediction() concerns “your money or your life” —, but he’s up against the same wall that everybody else trying to make sense of this mess would be: the documentation is pretty thin, pretty vague.
He speaks of “lies” and “gaslighting”, and these may indeed be the correct terms. The actual audience for these claims, though, would be other SEO experts like himself. Just because Google is lying to SEO experts doesn’t mean they have been lying to us about search (though it’s a pretty good indicator), because SEO experts are trying to game search. It’s their whole business. My impression is that SEO experts are kind of like the people who develop card counting systems and then go to Vegas casinos, looking to clean up at 21.
IMO, I don’t think we’re going to find an obvious smoking gun — like there is code to specifically demote NC in search results, with some kind of search against “nakedcapitalism” hard-coded —, or there is a sh*tlist file, etc. It won’t be like that. But there is a whole discussion of how search results get “demoted” and that is something that will need further scrutiny.
This looks to be an evolving story, especially as pretty much everybody I know is fed up with “the state of search”.
Thanks for this!
> there is [no] a sh*tlist file
I’m not so sure there isn’t. I don’t see how outcomes from all the conversations in The Twitter Files could be achieved algorithmically, i.e., an official calls up a platform and says “screw this guy.” I think a very small kill file would be just the way to handle special requests from the organs of state security. I’m also unsure whether Google would want to handle such matters algorithmically.
Yes, I would agree that such a list almost certainly does exist and it’s not 100% algorithmic, but I would consider that “data” rather than code, and I’m guessing we’re not getting that in this leak (though would be amazing if it surfaced). It’s probably a huge list of sites and filters, too. Assuming what we get in this current “leak” is all code, then that alone doesn’t really allow us to say how the sh*tlisting is being done.
For example, there’s a part of the API concerned with “algorithmic demotions”, but notice that some of those “demotions” are probably being triggered by URLs, e.g., what’s the signal for pr0n demotions? Where is that coming from? Given the right parameters, some of these features could be used to effectively sh*tlist specific domains, though we are missing the incoming data that would be needed to understand how that’s happening.
In any case, I hope King and others keep digging into this.
I think I’ll paint with bright colors this morning. There have been two attacks this week on Russian early warning systems for ballistic missile threats in southern Russia. They have had some success, but are still operating it seems. Ukraine seemingly has no military purpose for making these attacks as they don’t point at Ukraine but to the south. I have been thinking it is just a last ditch attempt by TPTB to degrade the Russian state’s defense capabilities. This morning Dima on his Military Summary video showed how they point at Iran and that environment. I very much doubt that this is an effort to protect or enable the 5th fleet in Bahrain. Who is it that is dead set on destroying Iran? Who controls Washington DC? Better yet, who has great influence in Kiev (besides DC)? This a puzzle wrapped up in an enema(sic). You have a much better chance of carrying out a strike if your opponent is blind.
Oops, power is running out. Back to bed.
FWIW, Alexander Mercouris criticized Dima’s coverage as considerably exaggerating the damage done. Dima too often goes a bit wild in his readings.