By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Southern Scrub-Robin, Little Desert Nature Lodge, Hindmarsh, Victoria, Australia.
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Stormy Daniels takes the stand, Molineux Rule issues notwithstanding.
(2) Vaccine hesitancy and trust in institutions.
(3) Why have kids stopped reading?
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 year to go!
National results now moving Trump’s way. But some of the Swing States (more here) are now moving Biden’s way, including Michigan and Wisconsin, which is no doubt why Trump visited them on his day off. Pennsylvania, OTOH, just leaned to Trump. Of course, it goes without saying that these are all state polls, therefore bad. Now, if either candidate starts breaking in points, instead of tenths of a point….
* * * Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Testifying in hush money trial, porn actor Stormy Daniels describes first meeting Trump” [Associated Press]. “Jurors appeared riveted as Daniels described how an initial meeting at a golf tournament, where they discussed the adult film industry, progressed to a ‘brief’ sexual encounter that she said Trump initiated after inviting her to dinner and back to his hotel suite. After it ended, she said, ‘It was really hard to get my shoes because my hands were shaking so hard,’ she testified. “He said, ‘Oh, it was great. Let’s get together again, honey bunch,'” Daniels continued. ‘I just wanted to leave.'” • “Honey bunch”?! Trump, from Queens, said that? “I’ll take ‘Things That Never Happened for $500, Alex.” (To be fair, the phrase is in Daniel’s book, as of 2018, but I don’t care; the piss-bed episode in the Steele Dossier is more plausible than “honey bunch.” Tapes, or it didn’t happen.)
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Stormy Daniels on the stand details Trump hush money agreement: Live updates” [The Hill]. “Daniels is recalling when she spanked Trump with a rolled up magazine before they allegedly had sex at their hotel encounter in 2006. She testified that Trump would ask her questions only to cut her off and talk more about himself. ‘I had had enough of his arrogance and cutting me off and him not giving me dinner,’ Daniels said. Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger later asked, ‘Where did you swat him?’ ‘Right on the butt,’ Daniels responded.” • Cue the liberalgasm. No projection here! (Indeed, one might urge that the same sort of mind that invented the episodes in the Steele Dossier invented “honey bunch” — an excellent brainworm, I confess; soon it will be all over everything — and the rolled up newspaper, too, the handwriting connecting all three being infantilization, a pervasive liberal Democrat trope).
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Jurors in Trump Trial Hear Witness Tie the President to the Payment” [New York Times]. “When questioning one of the witnesses — Jeffrey S. McConney, Mr. Trump’s former corporate controller — prosecutors provided jurors with their first look at some of those records, including monthly invoices Mr. Cohen submitted to Mr. Trump’s company. The invoices claimed that Mr. Cohen was repaid for ‘legal expenses’ that arose from a ‘retainer agreement.’ But prosecutors say the purported expenses and retainer agreement were works of fiction. And although Mr. McConney testified that he did not know the true nature of the payments, he bolstered the prosecution’s contention that the records were fishy. When a prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, asked Mr. McConney whether he ever saw a retainer agreement, he responded ‘I did not.’ And when asked if he sent the invoice to the company’s legal department — as was common at the Trump Organization — he offered a telling one-word acknowledgment: “No.’ Mr. McConney also told jurors that much of the money for Mr. Cohen had come from Mr. Trump’s personal bank account. The company sent nine of the checks to the White House for Mr. Trump to sign, Mr. McConney explained… Both phases of the case, the eye-catching sleaze and the stultifying records, are essential to proving the charges. New York law requires prosecutors to show that Mr. Trump falsified the records to conceal another crime, in this case, what the prosecution says was a conspiracy to influence the election by concealing potentially damaging stories from voters.” • In other words, campaigning? (I’m also dubious about the prosecution’s ability to prove intent; I remember one of those “Lunch with the FT” stories, where a reporter interviewed Trump. At the conclusion, Trump spoke with his staff (paraphrasing): “Make sure [the reporter’s] bill is covered.” The response (quoting): “It’s already taken care of, Mr. Trump.” So Trump’s staff handles a lot of things Trump doesn’t, er, need to know about. I mean, McConney didn’t write “fake business record” In the memo field of the check, right?)
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Jury in Trump trial gets inside look into payments to Michael Cohen” [CBS]. “Two witnesses involved in the payments to Cohen told jurors on Monday about how they were handled internally. Jeffrey McConney, the longtime controller for the Trump Organization, recalled how the chief financial officer of the company directed him to pay Cohen in monthly installments, beginning in February 2017. At first, the checks were issued from a trust that was set up to manage Trump’s assets while he was in office. They eventually came from Trump’s personal account, a change that meant his signature was required. Deborah Tarasoff, an accountant at the Trump Organization, told jurors about how she handled invoices from Cohen and got the checks signed. ‘We would send them to the White House for him to sign,’ Tarasoff said, referring to Trump. The payments were documented in ledger entries.” • I don’t want to introduce a debater’s point here, but Trump personally signing the checks would seem to show he believed they were on the up-and-up. After all, surely there were a myriad of ways to launder the payments that didn’t involve Trump’s signature?
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Being Held in Contempt Might Not Be Trump’s Biggest Problem” [Politico]. “If they were to do that with Trump’s broadsides since the trial began, the effect could be potent: The jurors would get to see just how inappropriately Trump has been acting outside the courtroom while he has been on trial — and while the jurors, whose lives have been upended and permanently changed by their participation in the case, have been trying to carry out their civic responsibility. In a bizarre twist of fate, however, Trump may have been saved by none other than Harvey Weinstein — or, more to the point, the recent decision from New York’s highest court that threw out Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on sex crimes. The court concluded that prosecutors in the Manhattan D.A.’s office had improperly introduced irrelevant and unduly prejudicial testimony about alleged sexual assaults by Weinstein that were distinct from those directly charged in the case. The jury has so far been shielded from Trump’s contempt proceedings. Particularly given the Weinstein ruling, prosecutors are now likely to be wary of a higher court later concluding that the judge inadvertently let the government back-door the contempt finding in this way when it otherwise would not have been admissible.” • This is the Molineux Rule again, but surely the strongest misuse of the rule would not be the Prosecution’s hypothetical introduction of Trump trashing the Blue jurisdiction jury, but actual witnesses presented?
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “This is 2024’s new political normal six months from the election” [CNN]. “But in dramatic testimony last week, former White House communications director Hope Hicks took the stand under a prosecution subpoena. In potentially the most significant moment of the trial so far, a nervous Hicks, who shed tears at one point, appeared to implicate Trump in a way that played into the prosecution argument when she said that the ex-president admitted to her that he knew his then-fixer Michael Cohen had paid Daniels. She also said that Trump felt it was better to deal with the story after the election than beforehand. But Trump’s lawyer, Emil Bove, extracted a statement under cross-examination that could be useful to bolstering the core defense argument when Hicks said her boss was worried about the Daniels story because it could hurt or embarrass members of his family.” • Hicks didn’t really give the Prosecution a whole lot (In particular, “better to deal with” doesn’t say the weight Trump put on the Daniel’s matter. It’s a paradox — I don’t love Trump, honestly, but the contradictions are making my head explode — that the liberal Democrat portrait of Trump is that he’s lawless and shameless, and indeed that’s his political persona; for at least segment of his base, that’s why they like him. So who cares what Story Daniels said? It’s just another lawless and shameless transgression. It’s entirely plausible to me that Trump cared more about the effect on Melania than the effect on his campaign, and in fact events proved him right. Trial of the Century, I know; perhaps I’m getting too deep in the weeds?
* * * Biden (D): “President Biden trails former President Trump. Can he come back?” [William Galson, Brookings Institution]. “A comparison between these surveys indicates that the distribution of the white vote has remained fairly stable, in the aggregate and between those with and without college degrees. By contrast, major shifts away from Biden have occurred among Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters. Surprisingly, Trump appears to have gained more ground among college-educated Black and Hispanic voters than with less educated members of these groups. Equally surprising: Up to now, Trump has increased his support more among women than men. Whether this trend will survive a Democratic campaign heavily focused on abortion remains to be seen. Also significant is the erosion of support for Biden among voters ages 30 to 49. This is the cohort most focused on family formation and most likely to become first-time homeowners, suggesting that the surging costs of child care and monthly mortgage payments may be reducing their support for the president… The declining rate of inflation (disinflation) does nothing to lower the cost of food, gasoline, electricity, and housing. Americans are yearning for price decreases (deflation), which are unlikely to occur without a significant recession.” And then there are the swing states. Here is handy chart. Note the exception:
More: “While Trump leads on four of five top economic concerns, Biden has made an effective case for his efforts to contain health care costs by focusing on specifics such as insulin and prescription drugs. His challenge is to find equally compelling specifics in other economic arenas and to persuade voters that these efforts are making a difference in their lives.” It could be that Biden’s “junk fees” approach — and maybe even some trust-busting? — could help with the costs of everyday good and services. I doubt it, though. Last year, maybe, but now it’s too late.
Biden (D): “Biden’s quiet comeback may be over” [Douglas Schoen, the Hill]. “From February through mid-April, polls showed Biden, if still trailing Trump, trending in the right direction. In fact, there was a point in which Biden was leading Trump in 18 national polls during that time. Further, Biden was racking up a series of wins, including improving economic sentiment, a key metric the administration was desperately trying to move the needle on. In addition, the initial news fodder surrounding Trump, who had just begun spending most of his time in the courtroom rather than on the campaign trail, consumed the media’s attention. While Trump was stuck in court, Biden pulled in massive donations to pad his cash lead over his opponent. At one Radio City fundraiser where Biden was joined by former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the Biden campaign raised more than $25 million — a record. For the GOP, Republican infighting was — and still is — on full display in the House, damaging the credibility of the entire party. Yet, despite all this momentum, Biden’s surge appears to have stalled. fter a brief period where it looked like Biden had finally found his groove, his numbers are once again dropping while Trump’s rise, and that is surely a worrying sign for Democrats as November rapidly approaches.” • Could it be — hear me out — that the problem is the candidate?
Biden (D): “”We’re Not Selling Hysteria”: Inside the Cold Calculation and Unyielding Optimism of the Biden Brain Trust” [Vanity Fair]. Reads like an answer to last week’s Susie Wiles hagiography. Lots of nuts and bolts. In short form, the Biden campaign is very well funded and is systematically deploying its assets. B-i–i-g silence on how and often Biden will hit the campaign trail. For example: “[W]hen Biden visited a North Carolina home in March, Flaherty’s team enlisted the family’s 13-year-old son to post a video on TikTok, generating more than five million views across a range of sites, the kind of reach a conventional rally doesn’t produce.” Clever, but flip it over: The campaign clearly doesn’t want to let Biden out of his bubble. And the new buzzword: Relational organizing. “[Rob Flaherty’s] digital turf overlaps with his more experimental turf, relational organizing. ‘You have to get people to share content through their friends and family, trusted messengers,’ Flaherty says. ‘This is important because of what I think is the second trend that is different from ’20. In 2022, half of the content shared on Instagram was in private. So if you’re running a digital strategy that is aimed just at reaching people in their feeds, you’re missing where a lot of conversation on the internet is happening.’ Getting trusted friends to share political content, both digitally and face-to-face, could be extremely valuable. It is also difficult. Last fall, the Biden campaign launched pilot relational organizing programs in Arizona and Wisconsin, battleground states that went for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020 and are up for grabs again. The results of a pilot effort in North Milwaukee are one reason for optimism that the campaign can reach middle-class Black voters, whom polls have shown drifting to Trump. A veteran Democratic strategist is more skeptical. ‘It makes sense in theory,’ he says. ‘The problem is it’s all anecdotal. We don’t know enough yet to say it works. I mean, you have an entire voting population that gets their news from TikTok, right? Which is why most campaigns now, we just push all the buttons. We pay for more door-to-door canvassing, we pay more for texting, we pay more for phone banks, we pay more for digital. But no one—not Republicans, not Democrats—is confident anymore on what messaging works.'” • In other words, a dollar in Biden’s budget has a different value from a dollar in Trump’s; the absolute numbers are important, but not determinative. For example, Trump still gets a lot of earned media. What happens, for example, if Bragg does put Trump in jail? Nothing good for Biden, I’m sure.
Biden (D): “Biden voter registration meeting raises eyebrows on Capitol Hill: ‘Election interference'” [Washingon Examiner]. “GOP lawmakers are growing increasingly worried that an executive order issued by President Joe Biden in 2021, which mandated that federal agencies develop voter registration plans with “approved” outside groups, will be unlawfully weaponized this November to boost Democratic turnout. The Biden administration has framed the unprecedented operation as nonpartisan, though internal documents show the government hosted a July 2021 order planning call that appeared to serve overwhelmingly as a platform for left-wing organizations to suggest sweeping election policy changes…. The meeting notes reviewed by the Washington Examiner, which were obtained through separate records requests by the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and Foundation for Government Accountability, show attendees from activist groups discussed topics such as registering illegal immigrants and integrating voter registration into public housing as a requirement under federal law…. The 2021 meeting was virtual over the platform Zoom and attended by representatives from the Executive Office of the President and the Department of Justice, among other agencies, as well as staffers from groups such as the Soros-backed Open Society Policy Center, End Citizens United, and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund.” • Why not allow the NGOs — of both parties — to spend as much as they like on voter registration, but on a randomly generated list of unregistered prospects? Watch the money dry up then….
* * * Kennedy (I): “6 months out, a tight presidential race with battle between issues and attributes: POLL” [ABC]. “Kennedy gets 12% even though 77% of his supporters say they know “just some” or “hardly anything” about his positions on the issues. Notably, his supporters are more apt to be Republicans or GOP-leaning independents (54%) than Democrats and Democratic leaners (42%, a slight difference given sample sizes), and in a two-way race, they favor Trump over Biden by 13 points. That may explain why Trump attacked Kennedy as a stalking horse in social media posts last week.
* * * “Behind the Curtain: 6% of six states” [Axios]. “Both campaigns are obsessed with six states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those were the battlegrounds disputed by Donald Trump after the 2020 election. And they’re the ’24 toss-ups, as rated by The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. A seventh state, North Carolina, is included in some swing-state polls. It’s rated “Lean R” by Cook. The other 43 states are either “solid” or “likely” for one of the parties. In our private conversations, Democrats are a lot more worried about November than Republicans are. Democrats say the race is winnable. Republicans think they’re winning. The swing-state map is a big reason why…. We perked up our ears when we heard a Biden insider use the ‘6% of six states’ formulation as a proxy for how narrow a group of voters are considered truly in play — swing voters in swing states. Republicans are making a similar calculation. A Trump insider told us that persuadable voters are below 10% in every battleground: ‘I think it’s probably 6% in Wisconsin but 8% in Michigan, and lower in Arizona.’… Trump needs to pick off one of the Midwestern Blue Wall states he lost in 2020 (Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania). Under current electoral-vote rules in Nebraska and Maine, if Biden holds the Blue Wall, he wins, Axios’ Alex Thompson notes. Many strategists in both parties believe Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes could wind up being the decisive state.” • Which is why, dear readers, I keep muttering about Pennsylvania.
* * * “Money isn’t enough to smooth the path for Republican candidates hoping to retake the Senate” [Associated Press]. “Frustrated by the seemingly endless cash flowing to Democrats, Republicans aiming to retake the Senate have rallied around candidates with plenty of their own money. The goal is to neutralize Democrats’ roughly 2-to-1 financial advantage, among the few bright spots for a party defending twice as many Senate seats as Republicans this year. But it also risks elevating untested candidates who might not be prepared for the scrutiny often associated with fiercely contested Senate campaigns. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, GOP Senate candidates are being pressed on whether they live in the state. In Montana, the party’s Senate candidate recently admitted lying about the circumstances of a gunshot wound he sustained. And in Ohio, the Republican contender pitched himself as financially independent but now may be turning to donors for help repaying loans he made to his campaign. ‘One of the challenges they face, as opposed to established politicians, is that established politicians have already gone through the process,’ said David Winston, a Republican pollster and senior adviser to House Republicans.” • Electoral politics is, in fact, extremely hard to do at all levels: Electeds, operatives, strategists. It might be that one thing electoral reform advocates could focus on is making electoral politics easier; not sure how, but we could start by outlawing the air war, which is extremely expensive (since the First Amendment is a dead letter anyhow, eh?)
* * * “What Went Wrong With the Third-Party Movement This Cycle?” [RealClearPolitics]. “After spending millions on ballot access, No Labels was unable to find a credible candidate willing to run under its banner and the Forward Party has shrunk into irrelevance. With an election cycle that began with so much hope and enthusiasm for upsetting the duopoly, what went wrong?… We have only had one successful third party in our country’s history. That was the founding of today’s Republican Party in the 1850s. At that time, the Democrat and Whig parties were the dominant parties. However, as the country grappled with the issue of slavery, both shirked from addressing the most important issue of that generation. So, a group of principled Americans decided to band together in a new political party that would take the issue head-on…. There are two important takeaways from this history for those longing for a moderate alternative. First and foremost, the Republican Party was organized around a political philosophy and a galvanizing issue, not the personality of a particular candidate. … Second, the Republican Party built itself from the ground up. It nominated candidates for state offices and for Congress before it had its first presidential nominee. … Both of these elements have been missing in subsequent third-party attempts and were in the failed attempts this year.”
Republican Funhouse
“The GOP’s deep generational split on immigration” [Axios]. “Young Republicans are notably more moderate on immigration than the elders in their party, according to an Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll…. Most Republicans in the older generation did not feel that media often portrays immigrants negatively or unfairly, while 63% of Gen Z said that it does… Republicans have largely moved the political and policy discussion around the border to the right, with lawmakers embracing once-fringe ideas such as involving the military. But the survey shows younger Republicans may not be fully bought in.” • I’m not sure it’s a voting issue for them, though.
“Noem defends telling story about killing dog in new book” [The Hill]. “Noem, considered among the finalists to be former President Trump’s running mate, has been embroiled in controversy since copies of her book, ‘No Going Back,’ became public.” • If Noem wrote that book to support her Veep ambitions, what does that say about her judgment?
“RNC chief counsel resigns after two months” [FOX]. “The Republican National Committee’s chief counsel Charlie Spies has resigned two months after accepting the position. Spies’ departure follows weeks of growing tension with RNC officials, a source familiar with the situation told CNN. His hiring rankled many Donald Trump loyalists who viewed the veteran Republican lawyer as at odds with the former president, given his previous work for Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and Ron DeSantis.” • Maybe Spies didn’t get along with Lara Trump?
Pandemics
“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!
Maskstravaganza
If your premises are contradictory, you can reason to any conclusion:
⏩VERTLARTNIC DOUBLE FEATURE:
⚫️Masks Are Totally Ineffective And There’s Absolutely No Point Wearing Them.
⚫️Masks Are So Effective That They Stopped Us Catching Diseases in 2020, That’s Why We’re So Sick Now. pic.twitter.com/MF3xRS1WcH— The Vertlartnic (@TheVertlartnic) May 1, 2024
Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions
“The Unexpected Drop in Intimate Partner Violence” (press release) [University of Melbourne]. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, with lockdowns and other limits on social gatherings, many expressed concerns these restrictions would lead to the escalation of domestic and family violence… But as the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) releases the fourth wave of its Australian Personal Safety Survey (PSS) – a complex picture emerges complicated further by the COVID limitations on the research itself. The survey has found that, here in Australia, the number of women experiencing intimate partner violence dropped during the pandemic, but how does this compare with expectations of an increase in IPV during the pandemic?…. In 2021-2022 – while COVID lockdowns continued – there was a significant decrease in 12-month partner violence. It dropped from 2.3 per cent in the 12 months prior to the survey in 2016 to 1.5 per cent during 2021-2022. The patterns for cohabiting partners also showed a significant drop in physical violence and emotional violence from 2016 to 2021-2022. This overall pattern of decreased cohabiting violence also occurred in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, while emotional violence decreased in the Australian Capital Territory. Rates were unchanged in New South Wales, Western Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory.” Note that there are a lot of confounders, and the causality is not at all clear. However: “[I]t might be that there was some positive impact from the pandemic. Some families formed a solidarity or cohesive connectedness against the uncontrollable crisis of the pandemic – pulling them together rather than fragmenting apart.” • Hmm.
Celebrity Watch
Does 3M have a marketing department?
Violet Affleck walking outside with her mother, with a brand new respirator in hand, ready to put on when she enters a public indoor space
Clearly not anti-paparazzi move (as some have claimed), just well informed & well protected pic.twitter.com/PEBKlSpsK3
— Sue J (@SMpwrgr) May 7, 2024
I think that’s an Aura. 3M, masker to the stars! (I’m envisaged a compaign a lot like the “Got Milk?” campaign in days of yore, but for respirators.
Elite Maleficence
“Information processing style and institutional trust as factors of COVID vaccine hesitancy” [Nature]. “We find that individuals with pre-pandemic elevated anxiety and less effective information processing tended to see the vaccine as safe, while those with anxiety and more effective information processing viewed the vaccine as less safe. This result may reflect a tendency among individuals with elevated anxiety and high information processing capacities to retain the decision autonomy and at the same time, due to negativity bias, to be more sensitive to negative information about the vaccines. Elevated levels of paranoia did not modulate relations between drift rates and vaccination decisions. As in prior results it was associated with less positive perception of vaccine safety. This negative impact was fully mediated through reduced trust in the CDC. Paranoia has long been associated with difficulties developing trust that lead to pervasive interpersonal challenges. Our results extend this dynamic to institutions: lack of trust in public institutions may generate additional social challenges for these individuals. We find that superstition and authoritarian aggression were negatively related to self-reported perception of vaccine safety, while authoritarian submission may be linked to a tendency to relinquish the decision to an institutional authority.” • Hmm. So the “vax and relax” crowd were “authoritarian submissives”? What do readers think of this article?
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
| Cases | |
| ★ National[1] Biobot May 6: | ★ Regional[2] Biobot May 6: |
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| Variants[3] CDC April 27 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC March 23 |
 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data May 6: | National [6] CDC April 27: |
 |
 |
| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens May 6: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic April 20: |
 |
 |
| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC April 15: | Variants[10] CDC April 15: |
 |
 |
| Deaths[11] | |
| Weekly deaths New York Times March 16: | Percent of deaths due to Covid-19 New York Times March 16: |
 |
|
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) Our curve has now flattened out at a level far above valleys under Trump. Not a great victory. Note also the area “under the curve,” besides looking at peaks. That area is larger under Biden than under Trump, and it seems to be rising steadily if unevenly.
[2] (Biobot) No backward revisons….
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.2 has entered the chat, at least in the model. Commentary:
What CDC projected last week was completely incorrect, not even close to what came to fruition, their forecasting ability is nonexistent, this entire narrative is #broken pic.twitter.com/E1p8yEIa3p
— Justin Lee (@DailyJLee) May 3, 2024
As I commented: “Surprise!” (Now I can’t find it, but I recall tracking a CDC model of infection at the national level because I knew it would fail, and it did, spectacularly, missing IIRC Omicron.)
[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) Flattening out to a non-zero baseline. I suppose to a tame epidemiologist it looks like “endemicity,” but to me it looks like another tranche of lethality.
[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: Posivitity) Flattens.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) JN.1 dominates utterly. Still no mention of KP.2
[11] Looks like the Times isn’t reporting death data any more? Maybe I need to go back to The Economist….
Stats Watch
Supply Chain: “United States LMI Logistics Managers Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Logistics Manager’s Index in the US increased to 58.3 in March 2024, from 56.5 in February, marking the fastest expansion since September 2022. This indicates that the overall logistics industry is experiencing healthy growth, albeit at the lower end. The growth is attributed to long-planned inventory expansions and improved efficiency in warehousing and transportation.” • Pennsylvania is a logistics hub, let us remember.
Retail: “United States Used Car Prices YoY” [Trading Economics]. “The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index for the US decreased 14% year-on-year in April 2024, following a 14.7% slump in March which was the biggest decline since December 2022.”
Tech: “TikTok sues U.S. government, says ban violates First Amendment” [CNBC]. “TikTok is suing the United States government in an effort to stop enforcement of a bill passed last month that seeks to force the app’s Chinese owner to sell the app or have it banned. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, argues that the bill, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, violates constitutional protections of free speech. The suit calls the law an ‘unprecedented violation’ of the First Amendment. ‘For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban,’ TikTok wrote in the lawsuit, ‘and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide.’ The company argues that invoking national security concerns is not a sufficient reason for restricting free speech, and that the burden is on the federal government to prove that this restriction is warranted. It has not met that burden, the lawsuit stated.” • I so don’t want to get another social media account, but if kids these days are getting all their news from TikTok, I might have to….
Manufacturing: “Some 787 Production Test Records Were Falsified, Boeing Says” [Aviation Week]. “Boeing must inspect undelivered and in-production 787s to ensure some steps in the aircraft’s assembly were done correctly after learning that required tests to validate the work were recorded as complete but never conducted…. Boeing ‘voluntarily informed us in April that it may not have completed required inspections to confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes,’ the agency said. ‘The FAA is investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records.’… The incident provides evidence that Boeing’s emphasis on spotlighting safety issues, even if they reflect poorly on the company, is paying dividends. It also underscores how far the company has to go, as falsification of safety-related records is arguably industry’s most egregious non-operational regulatory violation. ‘It brings the entire production certificate (PC) into question,’ said one former FAA official with extensive aircraft certification experience. ‘A PC is really an expression of trust. Considering all the [Boeing issues] bubbling up … the FAA may have no choice but to assume the falsification is widespread.'”
Manufacturing: “The surprise is not that Boeing lost commercial crew but that it finished at all” [Ars Technica]. “Boeing undoubtedly would like to have that decision back. In hindsight, it seems obvious that the strain of operating in a fixed-price environment was the fundamental cause of many of Boeing’s struggles with Starliner and similar government procurement programs—so much so that the company’s Defense, Space, & Security division is unlikely to participate in fixed-price competitions any longer. In 2023, the company’s chief executive said Boeing would ‘never do them again.’… There is a great irony in all of this. By bidding on commercial crew, Boeing helped launch the US commercial space industry. But in the coming years, its space division is likely to be swallowed by younger companies that can bid less, deliver more, and act more expeditiously. The surprise is not that Boeing lost to a more nimble competitor in the commercial space race. The surprise is that this lumbering company made it at all. For that, we should celebrate Starliner’s impending launch and the thousands of engineers and technicians who made it happen.” • Launch still “impending,” and I hope the crew survives.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 40 Fear (previous close: 39 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 43 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated May 6 at 1:35:49 PM ET.
Health
“Science shows how a surge of anger could raise heart attack risk” [NBC]. N = 280. “The findings, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association, show that anger may indeed affect the heart because of how it impairs blood vessel function. The researchers found blood vessels’ ability to dilate was significantly reduced among people in the angry group compared with those in the control group. Blood vessel dilation wasn’t affected in the sadness and anxiety groups. Dilation can be regulated by endothelial cells, which line the insides of blood vessels. By dilating and contracting, blood vessels slow down or increase the flow of blood to the parts of the body that need it. Further tests revealed that there was no damage to the endothelial cells or to the body’s ability to repair any endothelial cell damage. The only issue was the dilation, the study found.” • Hmm.
Class Warfare
“Rising Number of Men Don’t Want to Work” [Newsweek]. “American men are opting out of the workforce at unforeseen rates. For many, it’s not an issue of not being able to find a job. They have simply opted out altogether. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found only 89 percent of working age men have a job or are actively looking for work. In 1950, that number was at 97 percent…. ‘If the jobs don’t meet people’s needs, people can’t work,’ Yvonne Vissing, a professor at Salem State University and an expert on the changing role of men in society, told Newsweek. ‘It’s not that they won’t work. They can’t, given the job options, locations, tasks, hours, pay, and environments that are available.’… ‘Many jobs are simply not satisfying,’ Vissing said. ‘Working for others who get the benefit of our physical labor and intellectual property is not rewarding either emotionally or financially. People want to work doing jobs that matter to us. We want to use our creativity. We want to matter, and in many businesses, employees simply don’t get treated with the respect and support that we need and want. People walk away from them.'” • The Bearded One called this “alienation” in 1844: “[T]he worker’s activity [is] not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.”
News of the Wired
“Not Lost in a Book” [Slate]. “Ask anyone who works with elementary-school children about the state of reading among their kids and you’ll get some dire reports. Sales of “middle-grade” books—the classification covering ages 8 through 12—were down 10 percent in the first three quarters of 2023, after falling 16 percent in 2022. It’s the only sector of the industry that’s underperforming compared to 2019. There hasn’t been a middle-grade phenomenon since Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants spinoff Dog Man hit the scene in 2016. New middle-grade titles are vanishing from Barnes and Noble shelves, agents and publishers say, due to a new corporate policy focusing on books the company can guarantee will be bestsellers. Most alarmingly, kids in third and fourth grade are beginning to stop reading for fun. It’s called the “Decline by 9,” and it’s reaching a crisis point for publishers and educators. According to research by the children’s publishers Scholastic, at age 8, 57 percent of kids say they read books for fun most days; at age 9, only 35 percent do. This trend started before the pandemic, experts say, but the pandemic accelerated things. “I don’t think it’s possible to overstate how disruptive the pandemic was on middle grade readers,” one industry analyst told Publishers Weekly. And everyone I talked to agreed that the sudden drop-off in reading for fun is happening at a crucial age—the very age when, according to publishing lore, lifetime readers are made.” • My knee-jerk response is that politically correct Mrs. Grundys took all the juice and gore out of the books. I could be wrong though!
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, lichen, 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 SV:
SV writes: “Leonotis leonurus, also known as Lion’s Tail or Wild Dagga Is a member of the mint family of plants.
At Neighborhood Farms in the Western Cape, Summer 2024.”
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> Less than a year to go!
Half-a-year, actually.
Daily Surface Air Temperature.
That’s nothing :-{ :
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
Fwiw and not to be pedantic (and also not to contest your point, which I think holds) but Trump grew up in Jamaica Estates, Queens . Daddy Trump did have some of his biggest holdings in Brooklyn, though.
Whoops, let me fix that.
Daddy Trump owned the apartment building in Coney Island, Brooklyn, where Woody Guthrie lived. NC readers probably know that already.
I’ve always thought of Trumps unique diction and speaking style as “the Queens english”.
Quite distinct from Brooklyn.
As for “honeybunch,” Mary Trump reports that the term is a family favorite. From the Huffington Post:
Mary Trump Reveals Origin Of Uncle’s Alleged Pet Name For Stormy Daniels
“Can’t believe he called her this,” said Donald Trump’s niece.
I’d take anything Mary Trump said with a truckload of salts; both she and Daniels are talking their books, both of which are heavily politicized and sold to the usual suspects.
A contemporaneous reference would be nice, like from Spy Magazine (coiners of “short fingered vulgarian”).
In the FindLaw website documents for Trump v Trump, November 14, 2022, Supreme Court, New York County, New York, I was able to find the use of the word “Honeybunch” by Robert Trump (Donald’s brother) to Mary Trump.
In the case, Mary Trump testified that following the death of her grandfather, Fred Sr, her uncle Robert Trump repeatedly told her to “Cash in your chips, Honeybunch”.
(Me, Lena: I’m sorry I’m unable to post links here. This is the best I could do.)
I think actually Woody Guthrie lived in a regular apartment building on Mermaid Ave. Trump Village were right on the edge of Coney Island. I knew people who lived in Trump Village. They thought Daddy Trump actually kept his building in pretty good shape/
In 1950, Woody Guthrie moved into Beach Haven apartments owned by Fred Trump, near Coney Island Beach. Guthrie lived there for two years. Prior to that, in the 1940’s, he lived on Mermaid Avenue.
“…he lived on Mermaid Avenue.”
Decades later, in 1998, an album of previously unheard lyrics written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie, put to music written and performed by British singer Billy Bragg and the American band Wilco, would be released, with two more to follow, under the name of Mermaid Avenue. The three-album project was named after the song “Mermaid’s Avenue,” lyrics written by Guthrie—which, weirdly, was not included on any of the three albums.
The Klezmatics did, however, come up with their version of “Mermaid’s Avenue” for their album putting Guthrie’s lyrics to music, the 2006 Wonder Wheel.
“ The FAA is investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records.“
Hmm, which employees are we talking about? Did the rank and file just decide one day that they’d rather be down the pub than inspecting the planes?
In fairness, I’ve not read this article yet, but I’ve seen a few headlines this morning about this that certainly imply that it was those lazy workers. I am off to read where these dastardly people got the idea.
Well, just read it. So an employee (a “whistleblower” maybe?) told management what was happening, and management praised the employee and promptly reported the issue to the FAA.
I admit I am way over toward the cynical end of the spectrum, but this seems like a pile to me.
> this seems like a pile to me.
You mean a pile on Boeing? Totally not.
A pile of family blog ? ?
Ding ding ding ding! Vanna, tell him what he won!😁
Boeing is getting to be like the Israelis right now. When they make a public comment you just assume that they are lying their faces off. I wondered if they were going to sack a few workers even though they would have been following orders from management. The Boeing production line is completely broken and they no longer bother with the vital paperwork that makes up aircraft maintenance. If it’s Boeing….
“Noem defends telling story about killing dog in new book” [The Hill].
Between this and the false assertion that she met Kim Jong Un, my baseless theory is that Noem’s book was written by AI, and she’s a few more discovered fishy passages away from admitting it.
Makes as much sense as anything. Especially if the AI was scraping social media from Fundie influencer Brittany Dawn who’s best know for killing animals and selling bogus fitness products.
A$$licking Intelligence, I would say.
Has anyone seen any news of protests or other kinds of pressure from the populations in places like Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, etc? I have to imagine the upset has to be pretty high, especially with less censoring of this particular topic, I would guess. I keep waiting for one of these governments to crack. I guess Turkey did a bit with the sanctions and joining with South Africa on the genocide charge. Our ‘elite’ are upset with college students but those populations have to be boiling. I have to imagine Egypt has moved arms in response to this crisis. Wouldn’t it be tempting for Egyptian troops to target some of that Israeli materiel murdering Gazans in Raffa? They have to be watching, yes? Or maybe it is more cynical than that. Maybe they would rather them dead than flooding their country.
“I have to imagine Egypt has moved arms in response to this crisis.”
Under the current government Egyptian troops might just as likely be targeting their own citizens should anti-Zionist outrage among the genpop go kinetic.
Egyptian authorities arrest 10 after a pro-Gaza rally calling for severing ties with Israel AP
Hhhmmm, yes. I wonder how rank and file police and military feel.
I saw some article about massive demonstrations in Jordan. Apparently, the royals try to defuse anger by air dropping food in Gaza, but the population is very angry.
No link, and can’t find the article.
RE: Not Lost in a Book
First of all, I’m pretty tired of everything being blamed on the pandemic these days. As far as I can tell, the rona is still here so likely many were overreacting a few years ago with the “we’re all gonna die if you don’t get 25 vaccinations yesterday” (they were), or they are downplaying it now pretending the pandemic ended the very same day Russia invaded Ukraine (they most definitely are). I will never forget how the corporate media went from hammering us every single day about the ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’ to never mentioning it again as soon as Russian tanks rolled up close to Kiev. But as the article notes, the downturn in kids’ reading was there well before the rona.
Now that I got that off my chest, that article is a complete mess. They talk about multiple potential causes for the lack of desire to read. One rather dubious claim is that schools can’t keep classroom libraries together because of the fear of book banning. I’m not a fan of book banning myself, quite the contrary, but the article does mention that kids want to have fun and don’t want to read books about school shootings, for example. Well they probably don’t want to read about racism, if they even know what that is depending on their ages, and they likely don’t want to read about what adults do with their reproductive organs either, if they’re old enough to have a grasp of that, and for better or worse, those are the subjects of books being contested these days. Near the end they come to the possibility that it might be racism that’s causing kids to read less – not even going to dignify that nonsense with a rebuttal.
The article goes on to say that screens might be the problem, but surely not the whole problem. Only 30% have a phone by 8 or 9 they say – that seems like a lot to me. And then the majority have phones by 11 or 12 – that also seems like a lot. And that’s just the phones. But it still misses the point.
I was trying very hard not to get a phone for my kid and keep screen time to a minimum. We got an iPad at 12 or 13 and tried limiting the screen time. Under tremendous pressure due to other parents getting phones for their kids and ours being the last one out, we got a phone at 14, against my better judgment. But this still misses the point.
While I was trying to promote the reading of actual books to our child at home, what was the school system doing? They were replacing cheap chalkboards and whiteboards with extremely expensive “smartboards”, which my kid used from the beginning of elementary school. In 2nd or 3rd grade, they shoved a tablet into every kid’s hands (isn’t it wonderful that Apple helps out the school district!) and told them that’s how they were going to learn going forward. In 4th or 5th grade, the school set up its own chat room for kids to talk amongst themselves – sort of a mini-social media. About 45 minutes after turning on that monstrosity, kids were sniping and mocking each other and being reduced to tears. This all happened well before the pandemic. Currently these trends continue – my kid is now in high school and does all of her work on a tablet, using google docs for assignments, and has zero text books – none. Only books around are maybe the plays/novels required for English class, and I’m not sure whether the kids read paper copies of those, or get the text online. I believe I’ve seen those books in the classroom, but haven’t noticed the kid bring a dead tree edition home.
So when the school system is the one promoting electronic “learning”, handing various devices at them from a very young age, pushing social media at them, removing all the books from the classsroom, why would anybody be surprised that kids don’t like to read as much? And yet in an article that quotes all kinds of educators and researchers, nobody sees fit to mention that it might be the school system itself that’s the problem.
My 8 1/2 yr old still reads for fun (knock wood). It’s a fuzzy place in his development — blowing through all the decent graphic novels, which occupy him for about 25 min. each; not wanting to pick up novels cause books without pics are boring; quality material at the libraries is thin even when he bites the bullet and starts letting the pictures in his mind juice the story.
We’re reading to him every night before bed to keep him going (just finished Brandon Sanderson’s Tress of the Emerald Sea — perfect at this age and one he should be reading himself IMNSHO).
I don’t believe that making causal connections to describe social phenomena is so helpful. Shit’s complicated after all. But we’re lucky enough to maintain a single income household. It doesn’t seem like other parents have enough time and energy to read themselves, or to attend to their kids these days with the hoops everyone’s jumping through at work. I’ve also observed that quality YA fiction (which is about the level intelligent third graders read at) trends to the 12 and over set — late Harry Potter rather than early. Wish I could find more decent titles which aren’t quite as heavy, both graphic and YA.
“What is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?”
Speaking of Alice in Wonderland, if someone asked me to recommend a book to read to children (age five and up) I would recommend it and Through the Looking Glass. (The Disney Movie isn’t half bad either.) I can’t remember now how old he was when I read it too him, but I know my son had an audio tape of it that he listened to over and over even when he was in Jr. High.
Lewis Carroll was by profession a mathematician who had a lifelong passion for creating puzzles, word games, and logical paradoxes. “Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “If is was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.” I understand he is one of the most quoted writers in the English Language. This little film goes down the rabbit hole to help explain his enduring appeal: https://youtu.be/j4I1iQyMHSg?si=tnnT7oMIMN57D87G&t=25
Victorian children’s literature was literature, not dumbed-down pablum.
Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching series are aimed a little younger than the rest of his books, and are very good.
Don’t freak out too much if your child doesn’t like to read. We read to my son until he wanted to read himself. Daughter listened, too, until we got to Harry Potter which scared her. I tried reading to her books that she chose, but no interest whatsoever. All through junior high and high school reading was not her jam. Did only enough to get by. Now, she’s graduated from college and reads a few books a month… and the son who read all the time? Nah, haven’t read anything in a while. Kids change. Like different foods, keep offering but try not to force. You never know what will stick.
I don’t know if the book series “Kepler 62” is translated to English, but if so it might hit the sweet spot. Full page illustrations mixed with full page text (but pretty large text, so just a couple of paragraphs per page). Really nice illustrations too, great mood setters.
It is a Norwegian-Finnish trio that writes and illustrates. Sort of space adventure meets X Files feeling. With kids as the main characters of course.
Concur with your assessment.
Going to add that it helps encourage reading if your kids see you reading a book from time to time, preferably one that isn’t on a screen.
We read to her at bedtime every day from an early age. We have thousands of books at our house on every topic you can think of. Hopefully this will all sink in later in life, but now as a teenager she of course does NOT want to do much of anything her parents are doing. If would be a huge help if the schools would also set an example, but they are currently going in the other direction.
Of course from the teachers I have talked to, there is a disconnent between how they think kids should best be taught, and how the bloated and overpaid administration, which brings in all the tech and software to the schools and then later quits to go work with those same tech and software companies, thinks kids should best be taught.
I’m notorious for giving books to the grand kids. You might consider the books of Jean Auel (Clan of the Cave Bear) for your daughter, though I was condemned for giving it. Wanted to give the set to her before I died, so she got them all at twelve. Not allowed to read them yet and she is now thirteen. Nothing like a girl protagonist in my opinion. For my next act of aghastitude I think I will go with Charles Portis’ True Grit, even though the book has a real un-hip cover illustration.
Consider a small monetary compensation for reading and summarizing a book back to you. Gift cards and gas cards for good grades works sometimes as well.
Cheaper to pay a little to keep them on track, tutoring and makeup work is more costly.
Pizza Hut personal pan pizzas always worked for my generation.
That was such a big treat for me.
I completely forgot to mention food as a reward, good catch.
From a young age my son and I took home piles of picture books from the children’s section, chosen without much thought, mainly if the drawings looked good. I read two or three of these in bed each night. Then we would go through them all again, but selecting only the good ones to reread before going back to the library. I remember that we always agreed on which were good enough to read twice and sometimes thrice. We still have similar tastes.
My son is now 8, just finishing 2nd grade, and I can corroborate this almost to a word.
Probably 1/3 of his classmates already have phones, and closer to 90% have iPads at home. I consider their parents to be fools. Yes, this is very judgmental, but I will stand by it. They are fools.
Every student has been given a Chromebook. Same for us, the Chromebooks came pre-installed with a closed-loop proto-social-media software used for internal communications among the students. We worked very hard to insulate our son from social media exposure and the school district of all people totally undermined everything we had fought so hard for. They introduced him to video games, social media, tablets, all the things we deliberately kept him away from. They betrayed our values, and never even told us it was happening.
Luckily, our son has developed into a real bookworm, almost by default. He has taken a real liking to the Wimpy Kid series. Also a series set in the Minecraft universe, which he is fascinated by. We will transition to more novel-type books over the summer. We have a house full of books and make regular (twice a week perhaps) pilgrimages to the library. We’ve been reading to him every night since the day he could eat solid food. And frankly, what else is he going to do when he’s bored? There are three choices – play outside, read, or do chores. That’s the trouble with the iPad kids. They have a fourth choice, which is infinitely more entertaining and interesting than the other three. The only solution is to never have that option available. You can’t offer candy to a kid every day for 10 years and expect them to choose broccoli.
We also work hard to model reading behavior. I’ll be damned if my son sees me starting at a phone. I read not only because I enjoy it, but because I want him to see me reading.
It’s terribly depressing that we must fight the school district to get our child to read. He’ll be going to the Catholic school for 3rd grade. It’s going to be a major financial burden. Our lifestyle will suffer. But I see no other way. The public school system has been sold a bill of goods by the software people. The people running the district are themselves iPad People. They are not going to right that ship in my lifetime. They have different values, and a different lifestyle.
I feel bad for the kids who will remain. They are doomed.
> The people running the district are themselves iPad People.
This.
Here is a tale of woe that is not directly related but interesting nonetheless. There’s a book called Less than Words Can Say (1979) by professor of English Richard Mitchell († 2002) in which he bemoans the decline of language facility amongst his students (and colleagues!). He complains of too many students making too many errors in basic things such as subject-verb agreement. In an attempt to discover why this was happening, he went to the College of Education on his campus and asked people in the teacher training programs there why the graduates they turned out didn’t correct these mistakes in the high school students they eventually taught. It’s quite an amusing section of the book, in a black comedy sort of way. Long story short, it’s turtles all the way down: children learning to read and write in elementary school aren’t being imbued with the conventional forms of grammar and syntax because their teachers themselves don’t consistently employ them.
I even have a personal anecdote. In the late ’70s, when my kid brother was in about 3rd or 4th grade, my mother showed me his report card. The teacher (assuredly a fully-credentialed B.Ed.) had written: ‘Andy would do better if he just taked his time.’
(Regarding Richard Mitchell, it should be said that he was denounced in some quarters as an old-fashioned, prescriptivist fuddy-duddy who insisted on maintaining a forlorn hope rearguard action. And it is of course true that language changes over time. Not that we have to like it. :-) I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the now ubiquitous they used as a singular but I have come to accept that it is here to stay.)
“They talk about multiple potential causes for the lack of desire to read…”
https://english.news.cn/20240423/4b925af4e0174184befb6ee86ba0f4b6/c.html
April 23, 2024
Rural library opens new vistas for villagers in southwest China canyon
By Lu Yifan and Xiong Xuan’ang
KUNMING — Gan Wenyong’s first-ever exposure to extracurricular reading occurred at the age of nine, when he encountered the book “The Little Prince” by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
The experience served as a motivation for Gan to step out of the mountains and explore a different world. Also inspired by the book, he returned to his hometown in southwest China’s Yunnan Province over a decade later and built a rural library to nurture the dreams of the local children.
“Books lighted my way forward, and I think children in the mountains need the same passion to explore the world,” he said.
Gan, 29, is the founder of the library called “Banshan Huayu” (half hill flower talks) and a legal aid services provider. He was born and raised in Qiunatong, a village nestled at the northernmost tip of the Nujiang River canyon in the province’s Gongshan Dulong and Nu Autonomous County.
Qiunatong was once entrenched in absolute poverty. Due to the financial difficulties of his family, Gan missed out on educational opportunities in his early years. Instead, he spent his childhood collecting herbs, fetching water from mountains, and tending to livestock.
“I didn’t have shoes until I was six years old,” he recalled, adding that back then, there was no electricity in the village, and candles were used to illuminate his home after sunset.
In the summer of 2005, a tourist met Gan and gave him “The Little Prince” as a gift. The adventures of the little prince and the vivid words in the book, which were read out to Gan by his brother, inspired him to explore the outside world…
Brookings article, interesting and a well done summary I’ll add. Costs of stuff to live and exist each day, both for goods and services…who is the 35% that trust Joe Biden more? I think I know that answer but I will deflect the answer, at this moment.
Swing state performance is notable. Those performances by Biden, that were graphed for Georgia and for North Carolina appear consequential but we got a ways to go yet. Barring a / any economic surprise to the upside, one which benefits most American households, hard to see how that ground can be recovered.
Wait hold on, I got an idea! Let’s shovel US billions of dollars to foreign countries to make sure we can earn those hearts and minds once more! \Sarc
And the health care item is virtually a tie, 43 to 41%! Biden should be vastly further ahead given he was VP during Obamacare.
I added orts and scraps. Enjoy!
Intersection of plague biology and feral hogs: Pig hell: Italian soldiers will gun down wild boars that can spread African swine fever. (paywalled)
Excerpts:
To the list of dangers, add African swine fever. The boars can spread the viral disease with alacrity, killing otherwise healthy farm pigs, though swine fever is harmless to humans. An outbreak in Italy has triggered panic among the producers of prosciutto – cured ham – and sausages. On Monday, the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni responded to the outbreak by ordering the Italian military to take up arms and kill as many of the animals as it can.
As many as 1.5-million boars are thought to be running wild in Italy, having infiltrated every part of the country, and their numbers are expanding. The government’s goal is to eliminate 80 per cent of them over five years. Rome fears that the 8-billion euros prosciutto and sausage industry – prosciutto, like Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, is a global symbol of Italian cuisine as well as a lucrative export – could get wiped out unless the fever is eradicated.
…
Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, in upstate New York, recently said that the hemorrhagic (bleeding) disease “had killed more than half of the world’s pigs since 2007.” The school said that a Cornell study, done with Uganda’s Makerere University, “confirms that a species of tick is responsible for maintaining and spreading infections” among domestic pigs in Uganda.
…
So far, the disease in Italy has been largely limited to the northern part of the country but its spread appears inevitable. Fausto Venturi, a farmer in the central Italian region of Umbria, says wild boars have become ubiquitous in his area and some are monstrous. “Two or three years ago, hunters killed one here that was more than 200 kilos,” he told The Globe and Mail.
Besides being a swine fever threat, they are voracious eaters, munching on everything from cereal crops to small animals. “The only way to control them is to kill them with hunting rifles or bring in wolves,” Mr. Venturi said. “The wolves will eat the small boars.”
Can someone who has been paying attention explain how Trump is a position to have his butt spanked while Stormy has a magazine handy and time to roll it up.
They’re laying on their stomachs on the floor thumbing through fashion mags and tabs together? (Tons of stock photos for this scenario. Not Trump and Stormy, just standard stock photo models.)
In regards to the imbroglio in Lake Tahoe, she said he performed missionary duty-which would allow for a spanking, and I wouldn’t believe the magazine story if it happened now, but back in 2006 they were still a viable thing.
It seems to me that the TikTok legislation fits the definition of a “bill of attainder.” It’s a power play that singles out and punishes TikTok without due process, via legislation rather than by trial in court. The legislation is based on the implication of crimes only conjectured, rules of evidence be damned. The punishment is real, American law essentially considers corporations to be persons, and the American Constitution specifically prohibits bills of attainder. What am I missing?
So he’s talking about himself during the brief moments of “performance” and she feels like he interrupting her side of the conversation that’s going on?
Even more confused.
FWIW, show jumpers and eventers seem to think well of her. I’d take her as president over any of the serious contenders.
Stopped by the SJP encampment at Syracuse University on Monday.
Students have been peacefully allowed to set up and maintain the encampment, one week now. Probably 50 tents, 30 students in a circle having discussion. No police… thus far. I offered words of encouragement. Got on their email list, if an ultimatum is issued they want community witnesses. Many of the kids are Jews. I spoke with a Jewish girl for 10 minutes; she was quite a radical.
It is inspiring! Think of the risks with police brutality and suspension/expulsion. Hopefully the movement is sustained.
On the weekend The fraternities and sororities were counter demonstrators, waving US and israeli flags, blasting the national anthems, etc. The Syracuse city police actually shut them down. And this Zionist nutjob:
Man arrested at Syracuse University encampment was president of Jewish parents council
Re: “Information processing style and institutional trust as factors of COVID vaccine hesitancy”.
It says that: “….individuals with pre-pandemic elevated anxiety and less effective information processing tended to see the vaccine as safe,…”
THAT is going to be deeply offensive to Blue MAGA! Less effective information processing, lol.
Add that to “authoritarian submission may be linked to a tendency to relinquish the decision to an institutional authority.”, and you’ve got the vax and relax crowd to a t
RE: KP.2 surprise
Attendance at my gym is down by 70%. I think that they got hit with KP.2 last week and are sick at home. People around me are saying that they got really sick last week. Mystery.
Our neighbour, the young man who does Society for Creative Anachronism events, (he models on a 13th Century Italian condottieri,) has had a very bad flu like illness for the last two weeks. It presents with a very severe and loud hacking cough. He thinks he picked it up at a Renaissance Fair meeting three weekends ago. He has had periods where he can work, and these are followed by periods of complete exhaustion.
We gave him some vitamin c, zinc, and elderberry lozenges to help with the cough. He responded, “Just like Mom would do. Thanks!” I don’t know if he is representative of his “generation,” mid-twenties with a four year degree, but he seems intent on “toughing it out.” He hasn’t tested for Coronavirus, nor does he mask.
When I bought over the ‘goodies’ I wore my KN95 mask. He wasn’t a bit offended. “You have to protect yourself.”
All in all, our health system today is “The very Model of a modern Major Health Establishment.”
From the Brookings study about Biden losing ground: “… major shifts away from Biden have occurred among Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters. …Trump appears to have gained more ground among college-educated Black and Hispanic voters than with less educated members of these groups. Equally surprising: Up to now, Trump has increased his support more among women than men. … Also significant is the erosion of support for Biden among voters ages 30 to 49.
Wait, so more educated, middle age, minority women voters will be Biden’s downfall? Oh the irony….(and wasn’t Kamala supposed to fix that?!).
The nation’s women are not 100% pro-abortion. So when Lambert wonders . . . Whether this trend will survive a Democratic campaign heavily focused on abortion remains to be seen.
Here’s the thing, being a dude, Lambert assumes all women are pro-abortion yet nothing could be further from the truth if my experience counts for anything. For example, a close friend and his wife were devastated when their daughter got an abortion. She had her reason, it isn’t up for discussion why, but this wasn’t a fetus to them, it was their grandchild! Think they’re voting for President Biden and the pro-abortionist? Better think again!
My wife and I would be similarly crushed if our daughter got an abortion. And because we’re lukewarm pro-abortion (meaning it would be her decision, not ours to make) you’d nevertheless better believe we’ve be similarly devastated. Think we’re voting for Biden and his pro-abortion agenda? Better think again, again!
That this is a woman’s decision means just that, but I suspect 50% of the women in our country are delighted with President Biden and the pro-abortion forces, but at the same time, 50% are delighted with President Trump and the Supreme Court decision returning Roe to the states.
Saying those who imagine women are unanimously pro-abortion are suffering from confirmation bias because they only hear what they want to hear. Same reason they’re shocked blacks, Latinos, and Asians are turning from Biden.
Bottom line? Votes are earned and politics is hard when you don’t pander!
I suspect it’s more like 65% pro-women’s rights:
https://www.npr.org/sections/2022-live-primary-election-race-results/2022/08/02/1115317596/kansas-voters-abortion-legal-reject-constitutional-amendment
I just voted in the Democratic primary in NJ. For president, there were 3 candidates: Uncommitted (ceasefire now), Genocide Joe, and a woman who claims to have been a pro-abortion Christian, but is now an anti-abortion atheist.
I voted for the first, of course. It was nice to have a primary ballot with only one Menendez running (I voted against him, but it won’t help).
> Lambert assumes all women
I never assume “all” anything. Contradiction is embedded, yin and yang style, in everything.
Unfortunately, the English language is not conducive to this style of thought. “Birds” in common parlance means 100% birds, and then we have to hang qualifying adjectives like “most” or “some” off the noun. Same with PMC; all PMC pass the same set-membership determination function, so from a class perspective, they are indeed a class, by definition. However, not all class members make the same ethical and societal choices, hence my (crude, frankly) division of the PMC into hegemonic (WHO) and exceptional (Trisha Greenhalgh) subclasses. One might go so far as to identify hegemonic with static (with respect to the class structure) and exceptional as dynamic (“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has” –Margaret Mead).
The same can be said for women; I am, for example, well aware that there are many women in the pro-life movement; if I were not, such a level of ignorance should preclude me from writing on electoral politics at all.
I am indeed a dude, and that naturally colors all my thinking (and feeling, for that matter). But neither are as wildly distorted as you suggest.
“The unexpected drop in intimate partner violence’
Funny that this is coming up. There is a movement around the country right now about violence against women. You have the parades, the Prime Minister is taking part and it is a really big thing in the media right now as they push it to the front-
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/05/horror-and-fury-in-australia-as-epidemic-of-violence-against-women-sweeps-across-the-country
Of course a cynic might wonder if this was artificially encouraged in order to push Israel’s Gaza genocide was pushed off the front pages.
“Biden’s quiet comeback may be over”
The problem for Biden is that his Bidenomics is still raising hell in the country. It may look good as an increased GDP but on the local level it results in high interest rates, high inflation and high prices. There has even been mutterings about stagflation. The guys at The Duran talk about this in the first half of this video-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5vCkRlnXLU (19:18 mins)
“We have only had one successful third party in our country’s history. That was the founding of today’s Republican Party in the 1850s.”
Can’t really agree with this. The Whig party was a coalition or fusion of parties of various political persuasion, united primarily by being “anti-Jackson”. This lack of unity made it difficult to compose a national platform, and their only presidential success came by nominating popular generals who were nominal Whigs at best (and I would characterize Taylor as a WINO). In this environment it created instability as they constantly were searching for the “available candidate”. In 52 they perhaps had a chance to nominate a true Whig (Fillmore) since Clay but Webster among others foiled that and they ended up with yet another old general (Scott).
As the Liberty Party began pealing off those of an abolitionist bent, Kansas-Nebraska created a limit on what the Whig coalition could accomplish, leaving the door open for politicians at all levels to reorganize under a different brand.
Liberty Party, for its part may be example of an early “spoiler” if you can assume their vote in New York had gone to Clay, would have given Clay the election rather then Polk.
Certainly after Republicans began fielding their own candidates, “old” Whigs, more united on economic issues, tried to soldier on but unsuccessfully, then tried to co-opt the nativist movement through an “American Party” but by then it was too hard to paper over sectional issues as Democrats successfully branded themselves as the true protectors of slavery.
Your Neighbors Are Retiring in Their 30s. Why Can’t You?
Who doesn’t want to work for a capitalist your whole life and maybe die on the job?