By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Brown Thrasher, Audrey Carroll Audubon Sanctuary, Frederick, Maryland, United States. “Very liquid sound to this birds song. Nice. Human voices and Fish crows in background.” Cows, too.
In Case You Might Miss…
- New Covid data, Covid and mortality.
- LA Palisades Fire: Misinformation.
- SEIU joins AFL-CIO.
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
Trump Transition
“Trump discusses his viral moment with Obama” [Politico]. “The president-elect was asked about it later in a Fox News interview from his home in Florida. ‘It did look very friendly, I must say,’ Trump said. ‘I didn’t realize how friendly it looked. I saw it on your wonderful network, just a little while ago before I came in and I said ‘Boy, they look like two people that like each other.’ And we probably do,” he said. Trump didn’t say what he and Obama were talking about in the viral moment. ‘We have little different philosophies, right? I don’t know, we just got along. But I got along with everybody on that. You know we met backstage before we went on, and I thought it was a beautiful service, but we all got along very well.'” • Meanwhile, the lipreader once more–
“Here’s what Trump has to say about that viral exchange with Barack Obama at Jimmy Carter’s funeral” [New York Post]. “Forensic lip reader Jeremy Freeman told The Post Thursday that it’s possible they were wary of cameras being pointed at them as they sat shoulder to shoulder and wanted to appear cordial. Freeman said the two were possibly chatting about international agreements. At one point, Trump leaned toward Obama and said, ‘I’ve pulled out of that. It’s the conditions. Can you imagine that?’ Trump didn’t dive into the specifics of the friendly chat. Obama laughed as Trump added, ‘And after, I will.’ ‘Call me at the foy after, yep,’ Trump said, to which Obama replied, ‘Can you just … it should be good.’ ‘I can’t talk, we have to find a quiet place sometime. This is a matter of importance, and we need to do this outside so that we can deal with it, certainly, today,’ Trump allegedly said as Obama nodded.” • But what the heck is “the foy”? Foy means “feast,” but it’s chiefly Scottish. Something at Trump’s golf course?!” Or Claire Foy? (I thought I had the answer when “FOIA” popped into my head, but that amkes no sense in context.
* * * “DOGE is dispatching agents across U.S. government” [WaPo]. “Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are sending representatives to agencies across the federal government, four people familiar with the matter said, to begin preliminary interviews that will shape the tech executives’ enormous ambitions to tame Washington’s sprawling bureaucracy. In recent days, aides with the nongovernmental [but not a corporation, not a 501(c)(3), not a private club, so what?] ‘Department [sic] of Government Efficiency’ tied to [which means?] President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have spoken with staffers at more than a dozen federal agencies, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media. The agencies include the Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service and the departments of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services, the people said.” Spoken under what authority? Elon’s mom? More: “At the same time, Musk and Ramaswamy have significantly stepped up hiring for their new entity [Oh, DOGE is an entity], with more than 50 staffers already working out of the offices of SpaceX, Musk’s rocket-building company, in downtown Washington, two of the people said. DOGE aims to have a staff of close to 100 people in place by Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, they said. While much about DOGE remains unclear [that is, we don’t know under what authority] — including who is paying the salaries of these staffers or exactly how DOGE representatives work with the formal transition team — the agency outreach reflects intensifying efforts by Musk and Ramaswamy to propose what they say will be “drastic” cuts to federal spending and regulations.” • One wonders what the DOGE onboard process is like, and whether, for example, it takes conflict of interest into account.
“Is Elon Musk the most powerful civilian since Rasputin?” [The Telegraph]. “History is scattered with ‘civilians’ for whom self-regard and extreme wealth fed a sense of megalomania that made them think they should, and could, change the political process. Sometimes they managed to stay on the right side of the line of propriety and, by using their wealth to do good works, did great public services. Sometimes their power came through displaying huge moral courage that inspired a following, and not wealth, and they circumvented the political class and changed the world for the better. Often it ended badly, in degrees of humiliation or even death [yikes], as their determination to influence statecraft met resistance or ridicule from those supporting conventional politics. Take, for example, Grigory Rasputin….” • Take Rasputin. Please!
* * * “Gabbard reverses course on key intel-gathering tool as nomination teeters” [Punchbowl]. “Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, is changing her tune on a key intelligence-gathering authority she once sought to repeal as her Senate confirmation hangs in the balance. Gabbard’s past criticisms of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act have emerged as a central issue in her confirmation process, leaving GOP senators — including some in leadership — increasingly skeptical about the former Democrat’s confirmation prospects. In her first public comments since being nominated, Gabbard told us in an exclusive statement that she now supports Section 702, saying the program is ‘crucial’ and ‘must be safeguarded to protect our nation while ensuring the civil liberties of Americans.’ ;If confirmed as DNI, I will uphold Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights while maintaining vital national security tools like Section 702 to ensure the safety and freedom of the American people,’ Gabbard said. In private meetings, senators are questioning Gabbard about legislation she introduced in 2020 that would repeal Section 702. However, Gabbard now appears to be walking that back, citing Fourth Amendment protections implemented since then to prevent the incidental collection of Americans’ data.” • Looks like some Republicans love spooks just as much as Democrats do.
* * * “How Trump Came Around to Crypto — and What Crypto Wants in Return” [Bloomberg]. “Trump nominated crypto supporter Paul Atkins to replace Gensler, and that announcement helped Bitcoin climb above $100,000 for the first time. The president-elect nominated David Sacks to the newly created position of artificial intelligence and crypto czar. Trump is also creating a crypto advisory group, made up of backers of the industry. Trump said in a December Truth Social post that Bo Hines will be the executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets, reporting to Sacks. Trump said he plans to have the US government keep rather than sell Bitcoin holdings seized by law enforcement, making these assets the basis of a so-called strategic Bitcoin stockpile. Trump has also said he would like all Bitcoin to be mined in the US; this promise may prove difficult to fulfill due to the reality of decentralized networks and cheaper costs of energy in other parts of the world.” • “Strategic Bitcoin” my Sweet Aunt Fanny.
Lawfare
“Trump sentenced to unconditional discharge in New York hush money case, avoiding jail” [CNBC]. “President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced without any penalties Friday in his New York criminal hush money case, 10 days before his inauguration for a second White House term. Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan sentenced Trump to “unconditional discharge,” meaning no jail, no probation and no fine.” • Entirely appropriate for Hitler!
Democrats en déshabillé
“Opening the DNC’s Black Box” [Micah Sifrey, The American Prospect]. “According to the DNC, there are 448 active members of the national committee, including 200 elected members from 57 states, territories, and Democrats Abroad; members representing 16 affiliate groups; and 73 ‘at-large’ members who were elected as a slate appointed in 2021 by the party chairman, Jaime Harrison. For a party that claims the word ‘democratic’ and insists that it is a champion of transparency and accountability in government, the official roster of these 448 voters is not public. Michael Kapp, a DNC member from California who was first elected to that position by his state party’s executive committee in 2016, told me the list isn’t public ‘because it’s the DNC—it’s a black box.’ He told me that leadership holds tightly to the list to prevent any organizing beyond their control. Today, we’re going to open up the DNC’s black box. The list we are publishing was leaked to me by a trusted source with long experience with the national party. Like Kapp, this person thinks it’s absurd that the party’s roster of voting members is secret. Indeed, since there is no official public list, each of the candidates running for chair and other positions has undoubtedly had to create their own tallies from scratch—making it very likely our list comes from a candidate’s whip operation.” • Anyone we know?
Realignment and Legitimacy
“The Unstoppable Rise of Energy Realism” [Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot]. “For the last decade, Democrats and the left have ever more eagerly embraced a climate catastrophist narrative on energy policy…. So what have the Democrats gained from their fervent advocacy for climate catastrophism? Not much…. Nor have Democrats been rewarded with a political bonanza for their embrace of climate catastrophism. Quite the contrary. They just lost the presidential election to an opponent who says “drill, baby, drill” and whose priority is cheap, abundant energy—not clean energy…. Can Democrats wean themselves away from climate catastrophism and their obsession with net zero? It could be difficult. Their net zero commitment stems from the extremely high priority placed on this goal by the educated elites and activists who now dominate the party. These elites and activists—unlike working-class voters—believe that nothing is more important than stopping global warming since it is not just a problem, but an ‘existential crisis’ that must be confronted as rapidly as possible to prevent a global apocalypse.” • Much to ponder.
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 (wastewater); 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, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Airborne Transmission
“Science tells us that portable air filters reduce infections. It’s time for public health authorities to make this clear” [Journal of Infection and Public Health]. “Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadian public health advisors and decision-makers have shared conflicted and confusing messages about the effectiveness of portable air filters (PAFs) in controlling the spread of airborne infectious diseases… Diseases such as COVID-19 are transmitted through respiratory particles that contain infectious material. If these particles come in contact with the mucous membranes of a susceptible individual, there is a risk of infection. In general, there is a dose-response relationship—the more infectious material in the air, the greater the risk of infection. Thus, any mitigation measures that remove these particles from the air (or inactivate infectious materials) will reduce the risk of transmission… This science is supported by decades of research and public health and health care practice demonstrating the effectiveness of PAFs in reducing the transmission of airborne diseases…. While evidence demonstrates that filtration reduces concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the air, this research should not have been required by public health authorities before implementation. PAFs, like other engineering interventions such as seat belts, parachutes and bridges, are designed and evaluated according to the laws of physics.” • Savage indictment of public health and hospital infection control,
Morbidity and Mortality
“The future of excess mortality after COVID-19” [Swiss Re Institute]. “Four years on from the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, many countries worldwide still report elevated deaths in their populations. This impact appears generally independent of healthcare systems and population health. This trend is evident even after accounting for shifting population sizes, and the range of reporting mechanisms and death classifications that make inter-country comparisons complex. There is also likely a degree of excess mortality under-reporting…. This represents a potential challenge for Life and Health (L&H) insurance, with potentially several years of elevated mortality claims ahead, depending on how general population trends translate into the insured population. Ongoing excess mortality can have implications for L&H insurance claims and reserves. Excess mortality that continues to exceed current expectations may affect the long-term performance of in-force life portfolios as well as the pricing of new life policies.” And: “Our general population forecasts suggest that excess mortality will gradually tail off by 2033, to 0–3% in the US and 0–2.5% in the UK. In comparison, by our calculation excess mortality in 2023 was in the range of 3–7% for the US, and 5–8% in the UK. Under an optimistic scenario, we find that US and UK pandemic-linked excess mortality would disappear by 2028, reverting to pre-pandemic mortality expectations. Under a pessimistic scenario, we expect excess mortality to remain elevated until 2033, above pre-pandemic expectations.” • Handy chart:
How the Pandemic Increased US Deaths!
Visualized in 8 charts by @jwgale in @business1. The Covid Pandemic Fueled a 4-Year Mortality Surge in the US pic.twitter.com/H6CW6ya0sO
— Ziyad Al-Aly, MD (@zalaly) December 30, 2024
“Mortality in First Eight Months of 2024 2% Higher Than Predicted” [Actuaries Digital]. Australia. The Abstract:
In summary
- For the first eight months of 2024, against a baseline that includes anticipated COVID-19 deaths:
- total mortality was 2% higher than predicted;
- COVID-19 mortality was 70% higher than predicted;
- Non-COVID respiratory mortality was 8% higher than predicted, with pneumonia deaths 14% higher; and
- these outcomes are all statistically significant.
- There have been five deaths from COVID-19 for every death from influenza.
- Mortality from non-respiratory causes has been close to predicted.
Elite Maleficence
Mandy Cohen visits Nassau County:
⏪ to when I visited a wastewater facility in Nassau County in November 2023. Learn more about how this tool helps us better understand & track diseases at the local level 👇 pic.twitter.com/y9vqEGkW0R
— Mandy K. Cohen, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) January 10, 2025
I’m happy Cohen gave wastewater testing some needed publicity, but this would have been a good time to wear a mask as a sign of resistance to Nassau County’s anti-masking ordinance.
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC December 30 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC December 21 | ★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC January 4 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data January 9: | ★ National [6] CDC Janurary 9, 2005: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens January 6: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic January 4: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| ★ Positivity[9] CDC December 23: | ★ Variants[10] CDC December 23 |
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| Deaths | |
| ★ Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 4: | ★ Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 4: |
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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] (CDC) Seeing more red and more orange, but nothing new at major hubs.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) A little uptick.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely jumped.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.
[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.
[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.
Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Unemployment Rate” [Trading Economics]. “The unemployment rate in the United States went down to 4.1% in December of 2024 from 4.2% in the previous month, below market expectations of 4.2%.”
Manufacturing: “FAA says up to 574 Boeing 767 aircraft may require landing gear inspections” [Aerotime]. “The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced that up to 574 Boeing 767 aircraft may require landing gear inspections as part of an Airworthiness Directive (AD). The AD, issued on January 8, 2025, raised concerns over landing gear on US-registered 767-200s, 767-300s and 767-300 Freighters following an incident during maintenance. According to the FAA, the AD was ‘prompted by a report of a main landing gear (MLG) collapse event following maintenance where a grinder was operating outside of its input parameters, resulting in possible heat damage to the outer cylinder of the MLG.'”
Manufacturing: “Airbus Tops Rival Boeing with 766 Jet Deliveries in 2024” [Inc]. “Airbus delivered 766 jets in 2024 and looked certain to maintain leadership of the jetmaking industry for a sixth year as arch-rival Boeing recovers cautiously from a prolonged internal crisis, company data showed.” But importantly: “Aerospace supply chains have been under pressure due in part to an exodus of experienced workers during the pandemic, with aviation competing with other sectors to recruit new labour.”
Tech: “Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01” [Rodney Brooks]. Fun stuff. Here is a handy chart of failed predictions for robot cars:
Legend: Dates in parens: When prediction was made. Dates in blue: When prediction will come true. Pink shading: Wrong prediction. Orange arrow: retraction.
And the kicker:
Pro tip: Think about this history of industry prognostications about fully autonomous driving being just around the corner when you read today’s prognostications about LLMs taking jobs, en masse, in the next couple of years, or humanoid robots being dirt cheap and being able to learn how to do any human manual task real real soon now. You know you have seen this movie before…
Very much worth reading in full (The author is Panasonic Professor of Robotics emeritus at MIT).
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 28 Fear (previous close: 32 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 33 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 10 at 3:28:04 PM ET.
Thank you, Mr. Presidents:
It’s over for Gavin pic.twitter.com/kTPAOU96uA
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 10, 2025
Lord knows I hold no brief for California Democrats (“Everything is like CalPERS”). But this is so over-the-top my tendency is to discount any Republican coverage of the California fires to zero.
“California wildfires: Police shoot down celebrities floating arson theories” [FOX]. “‘THERE IS an ARSONIST here in LA,’ actor Henry Winkler wrote on Wednesday on X. ‘May you be beaten you unrecognizable !!! The pain you have caused !!!’ Actress Alison Sweeney simply responded, ‘agreed.’ Singer Chris Brown took to his Instagram stories on Thursday and wrote, ‘Someone starting these fires. S— don’t add up.’ ‘Dancing with the Stars’ pro Peta Murgatroyd shared a tweet that was originally posted by political and cultural media personality Xaviaer DuRousseau that reads: ‘LOS ANGELES / SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THERE ARE AT LEAST FIVE MEN GOING AROUND IN SKI MASKS STARTING FIRES. KEEP AN EYE OUT.” But: “Despite the various claims, the Los Angeles Police Department told Fox News Digital, “We have not received any reports of arson.'” • I don’t know why we’d believe actors on this, any more than, say, mainstream economists (of whom, see below). Then again–
“Homeless man with ‘flamethrower’ busted on suspicion of arson near LA’s Kenneth Fire after residents detain him” [New York Post]. “One witness told Fox 11 that the suspect was ‘very focused on moving forward’ with what the described as being more like a blowtorch. ‘He was like, ‘I can’t stop. I can’t stop. I’m not putting this down. I’m doing this,” the witness said. ‘And we’re like, ‘We can’t be doing that right now.'” So a citizens arrest is performed: “Soon after the suspect was taken into custody, the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed it was investigating the Kenneth Fire as likely arson. ‘At this time, that’s what we believe. It’s being investigated as a crime,’ LAPD Senior Lead Officer Sean Dinse initially told KTLA. The major crimes squad was brought in because he was ‘a possible arson suspect,’ LAPD Assistant Chief Dominic Choi told reporters in an update later Friday. However, the homeless man had so-far only been arrested on a felony parole violation because ‘there was not enough probable cause to arrest this person on arson or suspicion on arson,’ Choi said. ‘This investigation is ongoing, however,’ he stressed, thanking the citizens who tackled him and called it in. It was not immediately clear what felony the suspect, who has still yet to be publicly identified, was on parole for.” • So, the Kenneth fire, and I imagine that Winkler, et al., are thinking of the Palisades fire. That said, my priors did kick in. Reinforced as they constantly are….
“Economists Are in the Wilderness. Can They Find a Way Back to Influence?” [New York Times]. • Never have I felt happier to know of Betteridge’s Law.
“The Labor Movement Just Notched Two Big Wins” [The New Republic]. “One so seldom has the opportunity to report good news about labor unions that when two good things happen in the space of 24 hours that’s a triumph. The first is a rebuke to the incoming Trump administration. The second is an unacknowledged favor to it (but, more importantly, to the nation as well). Item One is that the Service Employees International Union, reversing a bad decision 20 years ago to disaffiliate with the AFL-CIO, is rejoining the labor federation. Even Andy Stern, who as SEIU president took the union out of the AFL-CIO and sought (in the end, unsuccessfully) to build a rival federation called Change to Win with the Teamsters and five smaller unions, said Wednesday that this is ‘an appropriate time to unite SEIU’s strength with other unions.’ The move will expand AFL-CIO membership from nearly 13 million to nearly 15 million. (Change to Win was a bust. It lost most of its affiliates, stopped calling itself a labor federation, and now operates as something called the Strategic Organizing Center.) Item Two is that the International Longshoremen’s Association, or ILA, which represents dockworkers on the East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, reached a deal on a new contract, averting a second dockworker strike. The first strike, in October, lasted three days before a wage deal was reached under heavy pressure on management from the Biden White House, with further negotiations postponed until after the presidential election.”
“Inmates Can Make Up Nearly A Third Of Those Fighting California Fires” [Forbes]. “While the 13th Amendment ended slavery in the United States, a loophole allows people convicted of crimes to be forced to work for public or private enterprises. In this case, those tasked with firefighting volunteer for those positions and must meet certain criteria. They are not assigned without their consent. Their pay scale was doubled in 2023, and depending on the skill level and the task assigned, they either receive $0.16 to $0.74 an hour or a maximum day rate of $5.80 to $10.24. Most of their lunches consist of a simple sandwich—two pieces of white bread with a few slices of bologna—plus an apple. Their daily food budget of approximately $4 per day is hardly enough to sustain them for their high volume of manual labor. Incarcerated firefighters have some of the highest injury rates among all prison workers and are four times more likely to sustain injuries compared to other firefighters. Also, they work some of the longest hours and have some of the hardest tasks to execute. They don’t shoot water hoses; they use powered chainsaws and manual hand tools, such as axes, with the goal of starving the fire of fuel to continue to burn.” But: “During the most recent U.S. election, California voters rejected Proposition 6, a ballot measure that would have banned forced labor in state prisons.” • What really bugs me is that the prisoners, having paid their debt to society are then barred from becoming firefighters. That’s insane.
“Scientists mystified by massive structures found deep beneath the Pacific Ocean” [StudyFinds]. “Miles beneath the Pacific Ocean, in a region of Earth’s mantle where conventional wisdom says nothing unusual should exist, scientists have discovered something extraordinary. Using innovative technology to analyze seismic waves, researchers have identified massive structures that challenge fundamental theories about how our planet formed and evolved. It’s as if we’ve discovered a new geological continent – not on Earth’s surface, but deep within it.” • R’lyeh?
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Now, now Lambert…
You’re getting a wee bit testy over Bitcoin, and I’m happy to announce the launch of Bitchcoin, whose value goes up everytime somebody caterwauls in regards to crypto, online
Explain it to me like I’m five. How on earth can a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” possibly be “Strategic”?
Then: Strategic Air Command
Now: Strategic Air Command
The Strategic Oil Reserve is based on a primary commodity which underpins the entire economy from shocks external and internal e.g. Strategic.
Bitcoin and all crypto assets imo could all go poof tomorrow and not effect the economy save the loss of fiat first used to buy it or the Cap Ex to mine/administer it [malinvestment]. It should be noted those that promoted it in the early days and even more so now have a strong ideological bias, furthermore hardcore Techbros/Fintech sorts. All of which is just another artificial neoliberal bottle neck in extracting rents off the unwashed via balance sheet buffing for more cheap credit which to funnel back into juicing financial asset prices self licking ice-cream cone thingy.
Yet none of it is used to satisfy contracts which is the whole purpose of currency, which then translates to economic activity.
Lets not forget Milton Friedman and his mobs influences which enabled so much, share holder value, Monetarism, rational agent models, et al. How that resulted in unregulated derivatives going pop, which had huge exposure to the REMBS paper, and the early days where Friedman got caught writing propaganda for the RE developer industry …. how Austrian and Libertarian economic ideological sorts promoted suburbia as the utopian human construct … looks at Calif now, post Helene, etc.
Basically anything that comes out of this camps deductive processes is against the average citizans self interest.
I would add Wuk … do you think the Crypto Market is self correcting?
Its a limited edition riddle wrapped in a mystery of an enigma machine, or in other words, I know nothing, nothing!
NC has unpacked all that mate, yonks of time, in detail, supported, verifiable, tis not a mystery or enigma mate.
Gosh mate … after Gld went stoopid post GFC and I sold the lot accumulated from family mines [smelted on site], buys over a few decades, because it just sits there, like home flood/fire insurance lmmao … I knew about crypto and had the comp equip hardware back ground and could have minted heaps in the early days …
I did not for ethical reasons and not personal gain considering the destruction it could have on society as a whole. Not the first time I made that decision in my life IMO, not governed by money – but mind.
One of the Dartful Codgers (back east variant) related that they had bought $100k worth of Bitcoin in 2012, and we did the math and its around $700 million now, and the crazy thing is I believe it.
Hahahahhaha~~~~
How does a classical hard money sort with notions of value added Capitalism M-C-M end up throwing that whole notion over the rail for M-M Capitalism without batting a eye to the past.
So yeah … its a reserve of what exactly and again how does it advance the classical notion of a national economy for the benefit of everyone long term.
Going to be interesting when jackpot hits you mate …
My hard assets are largely granite, and there’s a veritable shitlode of it in the High Sierra, plenty to go around.
If the Jackpot hits, I’m a really good hider and know the backcountry like the back of my hand.
The Jackpot isn’t a thing, its a process. Its a slow-rolling process happening now and gathering speed.
The deliberate midwifing of covid into pandemic status and then into endemic permanence is part of the Jackpot process.
The upcoming deliberate midwifing of the current birdflu into a human megadeath pandemic is a part of the Jackpotification process.
” You’re soaking in it.”
As are we all.
It’s “worth” $700 million” now as long as there are enough greater fools who will pay that “$700 million”. But would the sellers of that bitcoin accept payment in an equal “face value amount” of some other cryptocurrency? Or will they demand payment in tradmoney? ( traditional money. Hey! that’s a new word I think I will start using to see if it catches on. Tradmoney!)
And to regressionize a step further back . . . if the Great Famine comes and you have a million bitcoins and I have one can of tuna, do you think I will sell you my can of tuna fish for your million bitcoins? I can promise you that I won’t. I’ll be too busy eating it myself.
It means nothing to me, it’s as if they are in a bowling league with Earl Anthony, and I don’t hurl.
Maybe money laundering at the federal level? “Integrating Black-Ops with the Treasury”? Why not, seems to be a natural progression in this timeline.
Considering the mindset and track records of the people pushing this agenda I am confidant a few will win and most will lose. History is very clear about how things go when elites party/frolic whilst the unwashed play the squid game.
The big holders really, really want govt-backstopped infinite liquidity in the system so they can cash out their paper billions into real money. I think it’s that simple.
Thin markets are great for pumping, not so much for cashing out.
Strategic, ” helping to achieve a plan, for example in business or politics.”
Bitcoin reserve seems strategic to me.
Well if we are to go down that path …
“Strategy (from Greek στρατηγία stratēgia, “art of troop leader; office of general, command, generalship”[1]) is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty.[2] In the sense of the “art of the general”, which included several subsets of skills including military tactics, siegecraft, logistics etc., the term came into use in the 6th century C.E. in Eastern Roman terminology, and was translated into Western vernacular languages only in the 18th century. From then until the 20th century, the word “strategy” came to denote “a comprehensive way to try to pursue political ends, including the threat or actual use of force, in a dialectic of wills” in a military conflict, in which both adversaries interact.[3]
Strategy is important because the resources available to achieve goals are usually limited. Strategy generally involves setting goals and priorities, determining actions to achieve the goals, and mobilizing resources to execute the actions.[4] A strategy describes how the ends (goals) will be achieved by the means (resources).[5] Strategy can be intended or can emerge as a pattern of activity as the organization adapts to its environment or competes.[4] It involves activities such as strategic planning and strategic thinking.[6]
Henry Mintzberg from McGill University defined strategy as a pattern in a stream of decisions to contrast with a view of strategy as planning,[7]. while Max McKeown (2011) argues that “strategy is about shaping the future” and is the human attempt to get to “desirable ends with available means”. Vladimir Kvint defines strategy as “a system of finding, formulating, and developing a doctrine that will ensure long-term success if followed faithfully.”[8]” – wiki
The issue here is not about the term – strategic – in the manner above but the reserve aspect e.g. reserve of what – ????? – notional price in a opaque market subject to the machinations of a few whales. I understand the aspect of a strategic “reserve” of Oil/Gas in the economic sense of a sovereign nation, albeit a reserve of bitcoin just seems a dialectal party trick to further dumb down the unwashed and front load more free yield for for crypto mavens.
Totally bizarre to watch Trumps camp claims about saving Capitalism [which is never defined] whilst pushing the most extreme neoliberal agendas.
Don’t we already have one?
Thanks evildoers! (Link)
How much of that was stolen and laundered by- Razzlekhan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCwAH70r9xc
Very hard to take any of this seriously.
119,756 BTC…
And for those who want a more manly version of Bitchcoin, there is also Butchcoin as well. It has the full authority and backing of rich people’s promises.
At the moment, Bitcoin is in a state we might roughly describe as “the Trump dump”.
But it would not be auspicious if the tech bros and banks that pushed so hard for crypto ETFs are having a sad, just as the exalted orange one enters da house.
Ergo, a handout must be made, and what better than a strategic handout?
Here I thought Dogecoin would be the obvious stratcrypto.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=16TO1
January 4, 2020
Labor Force men and women with a disability, * 2017-2024
* Age 16 to 64
(Indexed to 2017)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=16TwF
January 4, 2020
Labor Force with a disability, * 2017-2024
* Age 16 and over
(Indexed to 2017)
Due Dissidence guys. utube, ~16+minutes.
FEMA Shelter Assistance To EXPIRE For 3,500 NC Households
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz5fJ39-h_s
Optically, and perhaps with reason, at the expense of LA. Biden says federal government to cover 100% of costs for initial LA fire recovery.
Peter Thiel’s oped in the FT makes for some interesting reading. I find it even hard to describe; it’s worth slogging through just for some insight into the mind of a man who wields incredible influence in the US and UK and is about to wield more.
As of now, I didn’t need a subscription to see it. Apologies if it doesn’t work that way for all.
Thanks for this. I had to leave it on the cutting room floor….
Hard to take all he’s saying at face value given what Palantir does. Will he shine the light on his own sins?
Agreed. New acronym for me, Distributed Idea Suppression Complex (DISC).
Couldn’t help himself with this part, We may expect no better from Orwellian dictatorships in East Asia and Eurasia, but we must support a free internet in Oceania. I wonder where he means?
Honestly I don’t know much about Thiel but thought his editorial was pretty good other than a bit of Trump fluffing. I also believe that it’s time to turn over lots of rocks and see what crawls out. And I think he’s right that the internet will win against the creepy crawly things even if he’s one of them.
Google’s “dont be evil” wasn’t a bad slogan and they probably meant it until they became the thing they were against. It’s all a contest between the powerful and the powerless and the internet gives the latter more sway.
WOW you should read some old NC post on Thiel … Anarcho Capitalist that would make Hans Hopple blush …
So you are saying he’s a really bad guy and therefore his article is worthless? Insincere? Wrong in its assertions?
Of course I do know who Thiel is if not much about him. But if he says something I agree with then I’m not too worried about guilt by association.
Any thoughts about what he actually said?
“Saying” carries a lot of water considering his past opines mate … I tend to reconcile the entire period than focus on one staged article …
2014 mate
“Zero to One, the new manifesto on entrepreneurship by PayPal cofounder, Facebook investor and Silicon Valley ‘don’ Peter Thiel, has stirred controversy for its defence of monopoly and attack on the model of perfect competition in neoclassical economics. According to Thiel, the goal of capitalism is not to create a perfectly competitive market, as economic theory claims should be the goal of an economy, but to create and exploit a monopoly. For only monopolies produce profits, and only monopolies induce the accumulation of capital.”
https://medium.com/@mathieuhelie/peter-thiels-zero-to-one-the-manifesto-for-a-new-economic-theory-of-capitalism-d71e0897ea6e
You tell me … eh …
I agree with Skippy and I’ll add his famous 2009 essay for the Cato Institute: The Education of a Libertarian
Money quote: “Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
—
More concretely, he runs effing Palantir, the CIA spawned surveillance and pre-crime behemoth.
—-
Beware his seduction
So he’s openly saying what most people in his class actually believe. I’ll leave my pearls unclutched.
Trump does that too of course and there’s a belief that Thiel and his associates like Vance and Musk are going to give his views an in. Therefore the invite from FT which–imo–is worth a read.
He is IN. He is the definition of IN. He wants everyone else OUT.
This is not hard. He is the enemy. He is the enemy of everyone who isn’t Peter Thiel.
To really demonstrate this, try writing a letter to the editor at the Financial Times about “Covid questions”.
He’s a caricature of who fox news watchers would hate under any other circumstances.
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/23/peter-thiel-jeff-thomas/
He also oozes charisma
https://www.yahoo.com/news/sweaty-peter-thiel-mocked-incoherent-172310946.html
“Were an IRS contractor’s illegal leaks of Trump’s tax records anomalous, or should Americans assume their right to financial privacy hinges on their politics?”
I’d like to know his answer to that question. Paypal is notoriously very cooperative with sharing lots of data with lots of people, who pay for it.
What he actually said does sound reasonable to me too. Given his priors, I just don’t believe that he means it.
Or maybe he does mean it, and wants to come clean, or at least realizes his own shady deeds would be exposed along with those of others. So that’s where the forgiveness and reconciliation come in – he also wants to get away with everything unpunished.
Carolinian
Responding to what he actually said in this article. On the questions he says deserve to be asked and answer, I can’t disagree with most.
His Covid questions seem legitimate
1. Did it come from a US funded lab?
2. Why did we fund EcoHealth research into coronavirius?
3. Is “gain of function” really bioweapons research?
4. How did the government stop the spread of such question on social media?
Thiel is upset at America’s decline. So am I.
He sees an out of touch elite leading our country, an “ancien regime” that needs to go. I *agree* but maybe we might disagree who makes us the “ancien regime”
He sees a “free internet” as the solution to fight DISC/Government censorship.
This is where I wonder what his solution looks like. Yes the elites have led us astray. But no mention of climate change or income inequailty. What is the policy he wants? Does a “free internet” mean crypto? No government power at all? At least no government control over entrepreneurs.
His critiques sound reasonable for the most part, but the policy prescriptiosn are left vague.
They will only turn over the rocks that they want you to look under. This is just more manipulation.
Portrait of Dorian, a Grey.
Very fitting. Reading that, I felt lost in a hall of infinity mirrors. He clearly knows he’s one of the ‘baddies’, he knows we know, so he uses the meanings opposite of how the narrative uses them, but is he doing so intentionally? or is it ironically saying ‘no’ to mean ‘yes’? How many layers of the onion do you skin?
Re Epstein’s ‘suicide’: ‘Almost half of Americans polled that year mistrusted the official story that he died by suicide‘ – no sh*t, sherlock. What’s that say about the half that believe the official story? And then riffs to the Kennedy assassination, but oh so carefully never weighs in on which side of the question he’s on. And all to rake up the COVID gain of function controversy and a laundry list of others. But it all leads to
‘our deepest questions — the causes of the 50-year slowdown in scientific and technological progress in the US, the racket of crescendoing real estate prices, and the explosion of public debt. ‘
look in the mirror, why don’t you.
There’s a massive power shift going on. Opportunists will be quick both to bend the knee and cast aspersion on the outgoing admin. It’s literally snowing sycophants these days, for instance Zuck on Joe Rogan. Lambert, you will want to see this one as he describes the greatest censorship efforts directed at the anti covid vaccine crowd. I parse, “feds wanted no posts allowed about side effects”.
And doesn’t Thiel have an interest in Greenland?
We are being sheep-dogged.
Thiel: The apokálypsis cannot resolve our fights over 1619, but it can resolve our fights over Covid-19; it will not adjudicate the sins of our first rulers, but the sins of those who govern us today.
I think this is a grander version of Elon’s Twitter Files scam.
1. Loudly decry censorship and position yourself as a defender of freedom and the people.
2. Take over Twitter and release evidence of gov interference
3. Proclaim that Twitter is now liberated and free
4. Quietly insert your own censorship regime
Apply this same process to government. While all the noise will be about the uncovered sins, a new regime will quietly be established. The shine they get from exposing said sins, makes many observers blind to what comes next.
—-
Thiel’s game, IMO, is to excise parts of the state and deep state for two reasons:
1. A lot he wants to be freed from totally. EG his long interest in ‘controversial’ biotech ideas, financial ‘innovation’ etc
2. Other parts (in intelligence and defence for example) he wants to take over himself with his CIA partners
—
Overall this is part of a plan to 1. Bring about the libertarian technocracy dream and 2. Coincidentally make P Thiel incredibly powerful and untouchable.
Thiel is a curious mix of brilliant strategist (he was a very highly ranked chess player when young) and mental/emotional dysfunction. His public pronouncements are often the opposite of his private actions. I’m never sure how much he knows he is bullshitting and how much is his mind fooling itself.
Is it just me or did he write whole lot of nothing? It seemed to me he was trying to convey an anti-establishment feeling against the old and a sense of optimistic reform with the coming Trump administration. Talking like they tried to stop him but you can’t stop the light destroying the darkness. He also ends it with identity politics to blame in a completely unrelated paragraph.
It’s an insidious oped, imo. He’s like Musk, but more refined. You see it in figures like Jordan Peterson as well, who say a whole lot of nonsense while appealing to emotions and buzzwords to generate a specific result of agitating people in the direction they want.
Relatives in LA say that broadcast news reports cover an arson suspect for the Kenneth fire. TV coverage also had interviews with people who saw looters attempting to gain access to houses. Packs on scooters for quick getaways.
My past experience watching news media is that many local stories are never picked up by the national media unless they fit an agenda. Many are messy or awkward to explain.
So local news is fun to watch for the dissonance and what is omitted.
To be clear, I am not J. Frank Parnell and I do not drive a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu like in the movie Repo Man.
“Hydroclimate whiplash” (open access)
Excerpts:
Many such rapid dry-to-wet and wet-to-dry transitions have occurred across the globe — often posing formidable threats to human health and public safety, food and water security, and infrastructure (Fig. 1 and Supplementary Information). The impacts of such hydroclimate volatility are often more severe than those associated with drought or flood events in isolation; the compounding effects of transitions can increase the physical magnitude of resulting shocks as well as the odds that adaptive responses are overwhelmed by the rapid succession of opposing hydroclimate extremes across a wide range of geographies. During the winter of 2022–2023, for example, a prolonged sequence of heavy precipitation events following several years of severe drought and wildfires in California led to extensive infrastructure and property damage from widespread flooding and hundreds of shallow landslides, culminating in disaster declarations in 40 of the state’s 58 counties; in a single 3-week period, nine consecutive atmospheric river storms dropped record-breaking precipitation, and; seasonal accumulations were ultimately the greatest on record in central portions of the state. In East Africa, torrential rains during the 2023 autumn harvest season followed five consecutive seasons of drought between 2020 and 2023 (which itself brought food insecurity to over 20 million people), destroying thousands of hectares of crops and displacing more than 2 million people from their homes.
…
Thus, hydroclimate whiplash is projected to increase in most global regions in a manner that scales with rising global mean temperature. These whiplash changes are likely to be larger in magnitude over land compared with ocean given that evaporative demand extremes can be greatly amplified via land-surface/soil-moisture feedbacks, and also to have greater impacts given the sensitivity of human systems and the terrestrial biosphere to extremes in freshwater availability.
…
Increases in hydroclimate volatility have the potential to impact various socio-environmental systems. For instance, rapid transitions between extreme wet and extreme dry can impact water quality via harmful algal blooms (when hot and dry conditions follow a burst of nutrient-rich run-off into a reservoir during heavy rains) or the influx of excess organic and/or mineral content (when heavy rains following severe drought and/or elevated wildfire activity wash silt, ash or woody debris into bodies of water). This degradation has resulting influences on freshwater ecosystems and water security. Hydroclimate volatility also has a bearing on food security through decreased plant productivity, crop failures, damage to agricultural land or displacement of agricultural workers, livestock mortality or decreased grazing viability, access disruptions and pest outbreaks. Rapid hydrological shifts further present a public health threat when hydroclimate volatility brings about population surges in potential disease vectors such as rodents or mosquitoes, or increases in pathogen-specific overlap of favourable temperature and moisture conditions; when water sources become overly concentrated and/or contaminated during very low or very high run-off conditions (elevating the risk of water borne diseases); or when the life cycle of soil-borne fungal pathogens depends on the alternation between wet soils for growth and later transition to dry soil conditions for aerosolization. Geophysical effects such as landslides and cracking of clay-rich soils from expansion and contraction might also occur, in turn potentially damaging buildings and water and transportation infrastructure
How is rejoining the afl-CIA a win for labor
Surely one big union is better, especially considering that SEIU strategy didn’t work out? Of course, I could wish that AFL-CIO were a little bit more militant…
SEIU is a major player with big numbers, I think it’s definitely better to have them formally in league with the other big hitters, especially UAW. Only good things can happen from being closer to labor militancy.
As far as I know, SEIU has a bad reputation for being staff-driven and contract focused, rather than building any worker power. Most organizers I know want nothing to do with them. That may be changing, though, they were interested in cooperating with the UAW’s call to contract alignment. Maybe there’s hope yet…
CA from our local news coverage consensus is forming that Kenneth looks to be arson, Eaton was likely a power line, Palisades started in the backyard of a house but the cause/intent is unknown.
The Palisades was unique for how many small fires made up the initial devastation. The wind was pushing embers miles at high speed. I recommend looking at the LAFD gis map: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=2a2f0086b9704121bef9be969d631d54
Thanks very much. I vaguely recall that the directiono of the wind mattered a lot, and this time the worst case scenario happened.
For example, if the wind blows across the canyons, that’s much more controllable than wind blowing down the canyons. Is this correct?
P.S. That’s a really good map. Thanks!
the lookout channel on YT has been doing great work. He’s a reitred fire planner, and map genius.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aWA4uPlUag
To summarize: the internet if given free rein from government censorship, along with government disclosures regarding topics ranging from the Kennedy assassination to Covid-19, will save us all. I now look forward to Mr. Thiel’s like critique of the errors, sins, and omissions of the private sector, particularly that portion of it in which he figures so large. Let’s by all means see what Palantir is up to.
Speaking of Peter, maybe Anduril is developing one of these:
The terrifying fire-breathing drone unleashed in Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkiCWiDs2kQ
ANDURIL https://www.anduril.com/
Of course, no need to spend billions if a lite cigarette butt out a car window can do the same thing, and I think given the conditions in LA, that might have been all it took.
Lee: only the government can censor. Private actors are just exercising freedom
\s
News of the Wired
Lambert, this may be the funniest thing I’ve read in a while. Thank you for the chortle!
[lambert blushes modestly]
One solution to the world’s ills: drill down there and let Cthulhu out. Could government by eldritch horrors from beyond the stars be worse than what we have now?
Yes it could. As Morpheus said to Neo in that Matrix movie . . . ” there is no bottom.”
I have added orts and scraps. Enjoy the coming weekend, everyone!
I thought “foy” meant foyer.
I agree, Late Introvert, that was my first thought. It could be the first syllable of “foyer” — “foy”, and Trump dropped “-er”, either intentionally or unintentionally; often the foyer at public events can be a place for a more private conversation.
That’s my initial thought, at least.
Seems like the -er would be easy to miss because you don’t move your mouth much from the position at the end of foy-.
Same here. That was the first thought that came to mind when I heard that word. So it could mean the foyer of the church that they were in or perhaps they are staying in the same hotel and mean the foyer there.
I prefer this map although much of the information is the same, as it also include satellite heat signatures for the hot spots:
https://napsg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/media/index.html?appid=a483112967f84db096e1c954f8249ad6
cheers
Busy 5 years. 467 papers so far.
https://retractionwatch.com/retracted-coronavirus-covid-19-papers/
“FAA says up to 574 Boeing 767 aircraft may require landing gear inspections”
Can’t be good news for all those airlines that purchased Boeing planes. Do they have to eat all the costs of all those extra inspections and fixes or does Boeing have to kick in money as well?
Seems to be primarily Fedex/UPS though Amazon operates some. Don’t see why Boeing would be involved unless they had done the improper maintenance on the MLG outer cylinders.
Is Elon Musk the most powerful civilian since Rasputin?
Not even close. I’d nominate Milton Friedman, off the top of my head. Unfortunately for all of us. : (
I live and work in a location with quite a bit of both California immigrants, and people going back and forth to California. About an even mix of LA and the Bay Area.
I have learned a lot about the entire upper echelon California way of thinking and way of life. I would say a lot I have learned is way more than I wanted, and the profound dysfunction is a lot worse than I ever dreamed possible. What has been most challenging to me as a physician is the complete disassociation of most of their brains to reality and to facts in front of them. There is almost a gnostic attitude that reality will fit and bend into whatever way the observer chooses to believe. Their life is a “journey” – and it is their choices alone that determine their fate – reality need not apply to anything at all. We have visitors and migrants from all over the country, especially blue state areas, and I can assure you this attitude seems to be unique to upper crust Californians. It leads to me having many exasperating phone calls with “Dr. Moonbeam” in that state about all kinds of crazy meds and interventions. If I wrote them all out you would never believe it. I am not exaggerating when I say that to many of these people, dying and mortality are options – to be negotiated with. And this is quite unfortunate and tragic when it comes time for them to really die. Reality bites.
I have now been informed this week by 4 different patients/acquaintances that their California homes have completely burned to the ground. It is the most strange grieving process I have ever seen. And there is in each one of them a rage I have never seen before – their delusions have given way to reality. They truly thought they were in control of this planet. Every one of these people is deep blue – as blue as you can be – but they are talking smack about Newsom et al even worse than the MAGA hordes. The incompetence and negligence of the past generation of uni-party rule is now on display for all to see. I believe I have heard it best described by my own wife, a Chinese immigrant who lived in LA when she landed in America and still very attached there, and Walter Kirn this AM – the “mandate of heaven” is at stake – and they have lost it. The political blood bath will soon commence. This has been a pattern throughout time itself in our species, and yet somehow we think we are invincible and above it all. The “indispensable nation” with the “indispensable state” at the vanguard.
As is so common in our world today, the incompetence is so thick with these people, they do not even realize they are incompetent. The “dumb” is so thick – they do not even realize how “dumb” they are. I see this every day in medicine. This entire fiasco in California is proof to me that this is pervasive in our society.
If my experience with their grief and dying is any indication, the rest of this country is going to be in for a very long painful process of acting out, temper tantrums, passive aggressiveness, lying and deception, and outright self-destruction. May God have mercy. I continue to pray for our young people and the world they will inherit.
Before you came here IM Doc there was another Doc … made huge packet on some code … yet rather than grace the beaches of some elite secure, he got a PhD in Psychiatry and tended mostly war vets for traumatic head injury dramas. Even worked for the Veterans Admin and lived in Malibu, got disgusted by the whole thing and moved to E. Europe.
I hold you both in esteem.
In my 63 yrs I have watched the bleed out of people like you and him due to neoliberalism and with it the nations future.
See also: COVID policy.
But if the upper-crust of California are unique in this regard, perhaps it will not be so bad in at least some other parts of the country.
Native son of the golden west here, and most everybody’s identity and self worth in the Big Smokes is their garage mahal.
Take it away and its a grievous loss in more ways than you can imagine…
spiderman meme
Right on cue……let the bloodbath begin.
Let’s fire the fire chief right in the middle of the worst fire in LA history. Let’s fire the chief whose crime seems to have been decrying using the budgeted fire dept money for illegal aliens, and such.
She made the mistake of pointing out problems.
I have no idea about her competence. It just does not seem to be a good idea to fire your leaders before the fire is out.
As for the lying horrific mayor who pulled this stunt, they are so supremely incompetent that they do not even know what competence is. If she thinks this move will save her, she is sorely mistaken.
https://x.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1877898406657487279
It truly will be one of the biggest shames of my life that I supported this party for so long in my life.
This is beyond incompetence.
Fired in the middle of several ongoing major fires at 4pm on Friday.
I don’t get it. From the little I know, none of the problems that caused or worsened the blazes are the fire chef’s fault, especially the budget cuts and the delay in repairing the main water reservoir in the area, which means that nothing will be found except for the mistakes of the mayor. Mistakes that will now be less obscured without the chief running interference.
Maybe I’m stupid, but I can’t figure out the thought process behind this act.
Yeah. The American elite lack the capacity to deal with adversity, too busy gratifying themselves. None of this bodes well for the future.
Imo our oligarchs do not select our leaders for competence but rather obedience.
We have just heard from friends who are now in a forced evacuation order. They live very close to Encino. If that happens, this is going to really take a big turn for the worse.
Westwood, UCLA, Brentwood are just right there as well and there is a big VA Hospital. I get the idea that there is absolutely no way to mitigate this. I pray the authorities are just being aggressive with precautions because this is now getting epically scary.
On the fire chief:
LAFD and Mayor’s office refutes speculation Chief Crowley was “dismissed” amid fires CBS
LAFD: Kristin Crowley not getting fired over Fire Chief’s comments on $17.6M budget cut FOX
However, even the fact of such a controversy indicates severe dysfunction.
Its a different party than the one you supported when you were younger. Different rulers, different thinking-brain dogs, different everything. Only the name is the same.
Can it be reconquered by New Deal Revivalists? Can it be subjected to Stalinist purges of Stalinist thoroughness with hopefully no violence? If the New Deal Revivalists are not prepared to see the problem and the solution in those terms, then they have no hope of achieving anything.
Every malignant clintonoma cell and every Yersiniobama pestis political bacterium will have to be chemotherapied and antibioticked out of the party to a reconquest to be successful and permanent.
A refusal to accept a real world outside the ego? And yet the world intrudes. The tide doesn’t obey King Canute. Clearly someone must be punished.
I get a similar whiff while reading the “Energy realists” article. Teixiera accepts that other people exist, but seems to think polls decide reality. If polls say the tide is going out, it can’t be coming in. Guess Canute should have done more polling.
As a Calfornian I will add that the elites think their actions and inactions had nothing to do with our predicament.
Out of state friends have opined that most Californians have massive senses of entitlement.
In our defence I will point out that many of those fleeing that are pissing off the locals where they move to moved here 20 to 40 years ago and drove all the bad trends yet consider themselves beyond reproach.
“Most”? Even the homeless Californians? Even the farm labor Californians?
Are the anti-human filth who keep voting for Pelosi really representative of “most” Californians?
HEALTH
‘This sucks’: Long COVID has taken thousands out of N.H. workforce, study says
Boston Globe
Not a single word about how you get long COVID or how to prevent it: respirators.
In 2025.
This is the stupidest timeline. This year gonna be lit.
I wonder if somebody somewhere is working on a magisterial book about the whole grand sweep of neoliberalism both as ideology and policy, and how it has brought us to where we are now; from its very first origins through to today.
One wonders if such a book could have a title indicating a grand and final debunking of Hayekism. . . a title such as ” The Road To Serfdom Is Private”, or some such thing.
How about “The Road To Serfdom Is A Toll Road”
apropo of nothing I heard on the sports radio (still free, for now…) that espn is going to charge a $40 a month subscription fee for american style football….maybe one of the reasons for paying players in ncaa is to justify the charges (profits ftw) which will undoubtedly be substantial. Thursday amazon prime games set the stage. I mean, I like sports, but I remember back when I could just turn on the teevee and voila!…Sports…
Now the advertisers are only looking to advertise to proven suckers i guess…
That’s a good title too. Or maybe ” The Road to Serfdom is a Private Toll Road”.
Someone should write the book.
It’s a little too gritty to be called magisterial, but I’m reading Musa al-Gharbi’s “We Were Never Woke.” It’s about the PMC (he calls them “symbolic capitalists”) and their ideology and how we got where we are. It’s quite good so far and his blog is also good.
Rasputin was a scapegoat. If he was actually as powerful as claimed, there would have been no Great War, because he begged the Emperor to avoid a fight with Germany out of consideration for the suffering of peasants (he was one himself; he was never an actual priest, by the way, contrary to that article). The Emperor could listen to the man who saved his son when it came to replacing some largely interchangeable courtiers, but not in a matter of actual importance.
I suspect that most of those “civilian puppetmasters” are much the same: scapegoats who could be humoured by rulers in points of secondary significance and perhaps exploited in political games, but who would swiflty be sidelined or discarded once they become inconvenient.
Lambert, what you wrote about inmate firefighters being barred from being firefighters after being released didn’t jive with my memory of an article about this from a couple of years ago, so I went looking and found it. It was very likely linked from NC at the time. It sounds like they’re not barred, but there are obstacles to it. Perhaps the article misses some information (from 2022): https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-california-forests-fires-ac38905f8f1edaf0f63ac04eedc8a683
Going by memory, in California they used to be completely barred from firefighting, but in the past five years the restrictions were relaxed somewhat. Considering the requirements that they have to meet just to volunteer while in prison, the current restrictions, even though reduced, are still wrong.
From the AP article:
This is good, though of course an NGO.
Yes, I missed this; the last I wrote on firefighting in California was the PG&E fires.
Good point that it’s an NGO. I wonder, at what point does an NGO turn away from being a force for good and what causes this? Would it make a difference if an NGO made a pledge not to take corporate/foundation money, Bernie-like?
It would be very interesting to see an analysis of these questions.
The problem with LA is over development, and draining the great lakes isn’t enough to fix that…
Forest succession rulz!!!!
My moms san diego condo is her whole net worth…there’s going to be a lot of very sad stories in the near future… I wonder about people with reverse mortgages and the like..prop 13ers who are living on social security….cali is made up of a lot of seemingly wealthy who aren’t actually…mixed in with a few too rich scoundrels
Among other things, I mourn the lost surfboard collections and vintage guitars, but I’m shallow…
adding…
I’m sure the same truths apply to the southeast after helene and her sistren and brethren…
what was it then $750 a person?
> I mourn the lost surfboard collections and vintage guitars
And apparently a lot of architecture, what the Times calls “old California.”
I know very little about Los Angeles (although I do remember that on my first visit, there was a gigantic, mountain-sized pillar of smoke off the wing, towering over the grid of light). But it does seem that given Los Angeles is built in a desert, more care might have been taken (or putting this another way, risk openly assessed and accounted for (exactly as Florida real estate is not either.)
Thom Andersen’s epic 170 min. documentary city essay movie
LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF (2003)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qolE4Qw5q7w
https://www.imdb.com/de/title/tt0379357/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_5_nm_0_in_0_q_los%2520angeels%2520plays%2520itself
p.s.
From the film presentation 2003 in Vienna, Viennale festival
google-translation from German (though it once was English:
“There are places of which we have thousands of images in our heads without ever having been there ourselves, and for many of us Los Angeles is a city like no other. Cinema has developed its own urban mythology of L.A., invented a fantastic city map that the filmmaker and historian Thom Andersen wonderfully traces, crosses and reassembles in his film essay. A city plays itself in a multi-layered puzzle of scenes, film clips and recordings, as handed down by the cinema in countless works. Thom Andersen calls his essay on how films portray Los Angeles a “city symphony in reverse”. The phrase is evocative if modest, for Los Angeles Plays Itself is in fact a symphony of many styles and tempos. Guided by his attentive, thought-provoking narrative (commented on drollly by Encke King), Andersen, with the help of excerpts from an eclectic series of films, puts together a critical history and counter-history of Los Angeles. Many of the films are well-known ( Chinatown , Blade Runner , L.A. Confidential ); others are rarer finds ( The Exiles , Bush Mama , Killer of Sheep ). The title is a cheekily corrective derivation of Fred Halsted’s gay porn classic L.A. Plays Itself. Andersen’s film is a treasure trove of treasures about the city and its films. The rigorous tracking of the various “roles” played by specific landmarks and districts over the years, including the Bradbury Building, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House and Bunker Hill, is truly impressive and rich in insights into film, architecture, transportation, racism and society. Often sneering, sometimes comic in his language, Andersen notices things about these films that others probably wouldn’t notice. The overall effect is fascinating and provocatively a heightening of the senses. (Sean Farnel)”
This is a great film, highly recommended.
With a nod to Reyner Banham, I will mention that the Ray Kappe house is in Pacific Palisades, and now about 2 blocks away from the fire:
https://architectuul.com/architecture/kappe-residence
When I checked status a few hours ago, LAFD was reporting this entire blaze is only 8% contained. -_-
P. S. IM Doc’s report of the fire chief being sacked in the middle of this disaster is just jaw-dropping.
It’s not true. On CBS and other outlets, mayor’s and LAFD both denied it. Lambert said he was putting that up in the Water Cooler comments. Guess he didn’t.
He did. It went up at 4:38 am as a comment in that earlier thread where it was mentioned. He even notes after the links:
I guess it was just missed.
Thanks!!!
He and I discussed this on the phone. My assumption was that the FD boss got such a dressing down from the mayor after the complaint on TV that either the FD boss or a subordinate that got wind of the row assumed she was about to be fired. Lambert though it that was the scenario, it made sense for someone in the FD office to get in front of the story before the Mayor tried to.
This story from today’s LA Times seems to uncover some details of what happened. The chief told her staffers that she was going to be fired when she was called in for a meeting with the mayor. The meeting ran so long that the mayor missed her appearance as a billed speaker in that evening’s press conference:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-11/l-a-fire-chief-raises-alarm-over-funding-saying-the-city-failed-her-agency
I don’t think you can call Los Angeles “desert”, the area was defined by the Los Angeles River basin / watershed and supported settlement/agriculture/ranching. Ownership of the water in the river was vested in El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles by the King of Spain. But the available water did create an upper bound on development / urbanization until Bill Mulholland devised the aqueduct to bring in additional water from Owens Valley thanks to exploratory work by Eaton, a name now in the news, which in turn by being owned by the city gave the city great power over the county.
Marc Reisner wrote in Cadillac Desert that LA had enough localized water to support 100,000 residents in 1900.
Kinda desert-y
p.s. architecture/film L.A.
Germany´s most important essayist and film documentarian of architecture in the US, Heinz Emigholz, among other things, did a nice piece on emigré Rudolph Schindler’s houses built in L.A.
In “Schindler’s Houses” (2007) he documented 40 buildings in and around L.A.
from his own site:
https://pym.de/de/filme/schindlers-haeuser
https://pym-de.translate.goog/de/filme/schindlers-haeuser?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
excerpt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNGdvqjVdgQ
Attention, Emigholz hates glamorous, fancy images. He works with available light, and on location sound, no interviews. The houses are shown merely in a fashion as they present themselves to the human eye (no birds eye view, no panorama etc.)
For more conventional fare, e.g.:
with 2 guys walking through the building and talking
Extraordinary Co-Housing Duplex in Los Angeles – Schindler House 1922 by Rudolph Schindler
16 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvjwL53fqmY
you find much more on the side bar of YT
Excellent, thanks.
RE: the DNC list and James Roosevelt, MA – a reminder from the Intercept in 2020 :
“As the primary in Massachusetts’ 1st Congressional District turned into a national story following allegations of misconduct against Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, the state Democratic Party declined to weigh in, citing its policy to remain neutral in contested primaries.
But behind the scenes, the state party had been coordinating with the College Democrats of Massachusetts to launch those very allegations, according to five sources within the state party and connected to the CDMA, a review of messages between party leadership and CDMA leadership, and call records obtained by The Intercept. The documents show that the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s executive director Veronica Martinez and chair Gus Bickford connected the students with attorneys: among them was the powerful state party figure and attorney Jim Roosevelt, who worked with the college group on a letter alleging Morse behaved inappropriately.”
Karen Bass was in Congress and head of the Black Congressional Caucus when Bernie’s last campaign was torched before the South Carolina primary. That is the one where Joe Biden, no where close in the polls with Bernie in the lead, stated “If a Medicare for All Bill crosses my desk I will veto it.” Right after that Clyburn, and Bass the heads of the caucus, made sure Bernie lost in South Carolina since health care is not an issue for most Blacks and health care and pharma cash is a big issue for the BCC members. The private sector does not hire them in the south for jobs that would have health insurance, the well off ones work for the government and have Tricare or Federal coverage and the poor girls with a lot of kids get Medicaid since they hardly work. And Bernie is a Jew and James Baldwin called it years ago. The South Carolina influencers reminded the parishioners on Sunday and they chose Biden. Karen was the other choice for VP if it had not been Kamala. Joe wanted her because she delivered the election. Obama wanted Kamala. After a number of undistinguished years in the early 1970s hanging around Bass got a 2 year PA or physician’s assistant degree from USC. In those days you did not need a bachelors. She went into politics and community organizing and apparently did not work. Had she worked with people in need she might not have torched Bernie out of conviction. The mayor gig was kind of her reward for not being VP. Assuming Caruso, her opposition, spent 100 million against her, which he says, she must have had some really big Democratic dollars behind her to win in 2021. Putting a woke LBGT at the top of an unwoke Union Fire Department seems like a pretty good way to light up the rank and file. I have two family members in the Union now and for kids getting in to the LAFD is about as hard as getting into Harvard. There is heavy alumni preference and a lot of prerequisites (hot shots, military time, paramedic license test scores and experience) (I have a lot more family retired or dead in the FD.) The pay and benefits are remarkable….likely better than what an average Harvard degree brings. Most of the job now is paramedic work….guns and ODs mostly given the demographic… If Kamala was not so photogenic and Hollywoodish we might have had Karen Bass running the US of A. And she was a reliable pro Ukraine war voter in Congress. And from what I am hearing during Ad breaks during football and the dinner table someone is supposed to check the hydrants and water every day or so always. It is like basic fire 101. And the Palisades were not a high crime district. The water reservoirs for fire were empty there was water available prior and pump stations but for some reason they were not filled. We will learn more with time.