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2:00PM Water Cooler 2/4/2025

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By Lambert Strether.

Bird Song of the Day

Brown Thrasher, Hilltop Reservation, Essex, New Jersey, United States.

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In Case You Might Miss…

  1. DOGE: Fresh lawsuits and probes.
  2. The DNC… . Oh, Lordie…
  3. How one programmer’s thoughts on bitcoin changed.
  4. Oldest known portrait.

* * *

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

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Spook Country

Couldn’t happen to a nicer set of goons:

“The Situation: What’s Going on at the FBI?” [Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare]. On the January 6 investigation: “Things have clarified enough today to say one thing clearly: A lot of people at the bureau—leadership and street agents, analysts and staff alike—are flirting with heroism right now…. How widespread is the internal resistance? I don’t know. But we are going to find out soon… Will the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, receive a pile of actionable material or will he receive what amounts to a large pile of spoiled questionnaires? And either way, what will he—and the White House—do with whatever it receives? In one situation, it will have to take on the reality that a shockingly large number of bureau personnel played a role, quite unsurprisingly, in the largest federal investigation in American history. They executed search warrants, ran down leads, interviewed people, made arrests and testified in one or more of the 1,500 plus federal prosecutions that resulted. Does Bove imagine that he will fire all of these people?”

“FBI agents try to block administration’s effort to examine Trump, Jan. 6 cases” [WaPo]. “A group of nine FBI agents asked a federal judge on Tuesday to block the Trump administration’s efforts to collect information on thousands of case agents across the country who worked on investigations tied to the President Donald Trump or the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol…. Each of the plaintiffs in the suit worked either on a Jan. 6 case or the investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after his first term as president, their lawsuit states. They are seeking an injunction that would bar the Justice Department from any ‘aggregation, storage, reporting, publication or dissemination’ of any list or compilation of agents that would identify agents and other personnel.'” • I like the underlined language. Maybe apply it to whatever scheme DOGE is working up to?

DOGE

“Elon Musk is a ‘special government employee.’ What does that mean?” [WaPo]. “White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has confirmed that Elon Musk — the tech billionaire whom President Donald Trump tapped to lead a large-scale effort to cut government spending and regulation — is a special government employee.’ … A special government employee is ‘anyone who works, or is expected to work, for the government for 130 days or less in a 365-day period,’ with or without compensation, according to the Justice Department. … Special government employees, or SGEs, ‘are subject to most rules, although sometimes in a less restrictive way,’ the Justice Department said in a summary. For example, SGEs who are paid at or below the level of federal employees with Senior Executive Service status are not required to file a public financial disclosure report; instead, they can file a report confidentially if they are expected to ‘have a substantial role in the formulation of agency policy,’ according to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. This is especially relevant in Musk’s case, because critics have argued that his ownership of Tesla and SpaceX represents a conflict of interest in his review of government spending and regulation, particularly in his dealings with government agencies that have in the past decided whether to award contracts to his companies or laid out rules that influence his companies’ actions and profits.” • Not to mention his advocacy of the blockchain….

“Unions sue to block Musk team’s access to Treasury payments” [Politico]. The lawsuit. “The Alliance for Retired Americans, along with the American Federation of Government Employees and Service Employees International Union, claim that Musk’s efforts may have illegally exposed the personal data of millions of federal employees — as well as any other individual who does business with the federal government — to unauthorized Department of Government Efficiency personnel. ‘The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented,” the groups said in their complaint, which was filed in federal court in the District of Columbia. The complaint accuses the Trump administration of illegally granting Musk’s team access in violation of federal laws that govern the privacy of agency records and protect the confidentiality of taxpayer information.’ • Access is bad enough. But according to Wired reporting, DOGE has admin privileges.

“Warren, Wyden call for probe of Musk aides’ access to Treasury payments” [Politico]. “The top Democrats overseeing the Treasury Department are calling on a congressional watchdog to investigate the Trump administration’s decision to give Elon Musk’s team access to the federal system that controls trillions of dollars in payments…. ‘GAO must investigate and determine who was granted access to these systems, why and how this access was granted, and the implications for the nation’s economic and national security,’ Warren and Wyden wrote in a letter to the congressional watchdog that was shared with POLITICO…. Bessent on Monday night assured House Republican lawmakers during a closed-door meeting that Musk and his team did not enjoy control over Treasury’s payment systems and that DOGE was reviewing federal payment processes to find inefficiencies and root out waste and fraud.” • You’d think Bessent might have assured everyone. Again, access, access, access.

“Bessent tells lawmakers Musk’s DOGE does not control Treasury payments system” [Politico]. “Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent privately reassured Republican lawmakers Monday that Elon Musk and his team do not have control over a sensitive government system that manages the flow of trillions of dollars in payments, according to five lawmakers in the room for a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill…. The remarks, relayed by lawmakers in the room who were granted anonymity to discuss a closed-door meeting, came during a two-hour gathering between Bessent and GOP members of the House Financial Services Committee Monday night that included a reception and dinner…. Bessent declined to comment on the matter exiting the gathering.” That’s a confidence builder: “Other Republican lawmakers on Monday also brushed aside criticism from Democrats that Musk and his team could abuse access to the system to shutter payments that Americans rely on. ‘It’s important for them to be able to know what is being spent — and make certain it’s being spent A, the way Congress intended, and B, the way the President would want it to be spent,’ said Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio). ‘Sometimes you have to go into the actual disbursement system, because that way you don’t get misinformation, which a lot of bureaucrats do.'” • This is stupid. DOGE’s team isn’t big enough to audit a lemonade stand, let alone the entire Federal government. Whatever is going on is not an audit.

DOGE (1):

Oh, is that where it is? USAID? Pretty pissant, if you ask me.

DOGE (2):

Dudes, come on. Not even close. Then again—

DOGE (3)

Nominations

“Sen. Todd Young will back Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence” [Politico]. “In a letter that Young posted online Tuesday, Gabbard committed to ‘holding accountable’ any intelligence community employee, contractor or subcontractor who who leaks intelligence; that she would not ‘protect’ members of the intelligence community who engage in an unauthorized disclosures; and committed to not ‘making any recommendations in a personal or profession [sic] capacity’ regarding Snowden’s legal standing,”

2024 Post Mortem

“How Democratic Gen Z activists lost the Gen Z vote” [Vox]. “Six months ago, young Democrats were preparing for a very different conversation. They were breathing a sigh of relief after Joe Biden formally dropped out of the 2024 presidential contest. Gen Z, some said, was ready to feel the “#Kamalove” and break with the past that Biden represented. The flurry of ‘Brat summer’ and coconut-tree memes that filled social media platforms was surely proof that there was a latent enthusiasm for Harris among the youth….. The work could now focus more on turning out the youth for a fresh candidate instead of persuading those who had been disillusioned by Biden to drag their way to the voting booth. This election was now more a matter of simply getting youth to show up.” Whoops: “See, there’s a fundamental divide between the young people who care about Democratic politics and the kind of people they were trying to persuade. Many of their turnout targets simply didn’t trust institutions or the status quo like organizers and young Democrats did. They existed in different information bubbles and media ecosystems, missing persuasion efforts including memes, celebrity endorsements, or digital organizing. Or they just didn’t care enough about the complex issues youth activists were talking about, when their concerns were much more basic, like how much a paycheck could afford, whether Democrats could be trusted to help them get ahead financially, and whether Harris or Trump would be a bigger disruptor of the status quo.” • BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!

“How Democrats Lost the Dissident Vote” [Ross Barkan, New York Magazine]. “But the fact that [Gabbard and RFK] are nominees for vital cabinet positions in a Trump presidency is a reflection of Democratic weakness. One, Trump won. Two, the Americans who admire Kennedy and Gabbard were overwhelmingly Democrats a mere decade ago. Just as Kennedy and Gabbard maneuvered into Trump’s orbit, their supporters largely did the same — concluding that only one party could be hospitable to them. One way to think of these Americans is as dissident voters. The term itself is broad and slippery enough, and here it will refer to a people from a wide range of backgrounds. At their core, dissidents are skeptics of institutions, whether that might be the federal government, the military-industrial complex, corporate America, or the pharmaceutical industry. Some of them are anti-vaxxers and some of them are 9/11 truthers. Some indulge in many conspiracies and some none at all. Some homeschool their children. Some care a great deal about wellness and physical fitness and have unconventional ideas for how they might achieve optimal health. Elements of the Kennedy and Gabbard worldviews speak to a wide swath of these voters, who are nowhere near a majority of Americans but make up a minority that can’t be readily ignored. ” • Hmm.

Democrats en déshabillé

Closing festivities at the DNC:

Martin the new chair:

Consultants, your contracts are safe:

The usual thuggery:

Did I mention that “bold” was a word to watch out for, basically a synonym for PR-driven and ephemeral?

They will die as a party rather than change (1):

They will die as a party rather than change (2):

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

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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!

Sequelae: Covid

Funny all the airline crashes of late:

Morbidity and Mortality

“Early adult death rates remain higher than expected post-pandemic” [News Medical Life Sciences]. “New research from the University of Minnesota and Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) shows that death rates for early adults, or adults aged 25-44, rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic and remain higher than expected post-pandemic. Heightened death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic intensified an already negative trend for early adults, which began around 2010. As a result, early adult death rates in 2023 were about 70 percent higher than they might have been if death rates had not begun to rise about a decade before the pandemic.” • 2010? Thanks, Obama!

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Lambert here: Wastewater is back (and down). Good.

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Wastewater
★ This week[1] CDC January 27 Last week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC January 18 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC January 11

Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data February 3: National [6] CDC January 24:

Positivity
National[7] Walgreens January 27: Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic January 18:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC December 30: Variants[10] CDC December 30

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 11: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 11:

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (CDC) Down, 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, but no exponential growth either, Odd.

[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 Job Openings” [Trading Economics]. “Job openings in the United States fell by 556,000 to 7.6 million in December 2024, missing the market expectation of 8.0 million and indicating a gradual cooling of the labor market.”

Manufacturing: “United States Factory Orders Ex Transportation” [Trading Economics]. “Factory orders excluding transportation in the United States rose by 0.3% over a month earlier in December 2024, following a 0.2% increase in the prior month.”

Supply Chain: “United States LMI Logistics Managers Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Logistics Manager’s Index in the US climbed to 62 in January 2025 from 57.3 in December 2024, signaling the fastest expansion in the logistics sector since June 2022. This growth reflects the sustained expansion of the US economy, alongside a sharper-than-expected rise in inventories amid uncertainty surrounding trade regulations, particularly tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China.”

* * *

Manufacturing: “Boeing Deferred Production Costs: $39bn since 2019 MAX grounding, $22bn for 737” [Leeham News and Analysis]. “[T]he balance sheet does indicate a figure of $87.55bn sitting in the Inventory account, but what is the detailed break-down of what is contained therein?… Each quarter, in the Boeing financial reports section titled Inventories, are the details of what makes up that account…. Typically, expenses are recorded onto the Income Statement during the period for which they are incurred, matching revenues and costs. Program Accounting allows Boeing to put those amounts into Inventory and keep them there, until it decides to pull them out. Normally these accrued amounts are expensed with a delivery. Other times, they are written off. Many investors would look at the balance sheet and assume that Boeing has over $87bn in product that it is able to sell to customers.” • If you play the ponies on Boeing, this post is definitely worth a read.

Manufacturing: “Boeing’s Starliner Fiasco Has Now Burned Through $2 Billion” [Gizmodo]. “Nearly five months after an uncrewed Starliner undocked from the International Space Station (ISS), Boeing announced that it lost an additional half a billion dollars from its troubled spacecraft as the fate of its contract with NASA remains unclear. In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, Boeing reported a total of $523 million in losses from the Starliner Commercial Crew Program in 2024. That brings the total amount of losses from the ill-fated program to a whopping $2 billion in cost overruns. Boeing cited ‘highly complex designs and technical challenges,’ as well as ‘schedule delays and cost impacts,’ that increased the cost estimates for its programs…. Boeing had forewarned that more losses were coming during the fourth quarter of 2024, and it turned out to be the heftiest bill of the entire year.”

Manufacturing: “Airbus Vs Boeing Vs COMAC: How The Plane Makers’ Market Share Compares In Asia” [Simple Flying]. “COMAC has a long way to go to ramp up and challenge Airbus and Boeing in any meaningful way. In January 2025, Flight Plan reported that COMAC delivered 12 C919 narrowbodies in 2024 (up from just two in 2023). It added COMAC plans to establish a production system able to produce 150 aircraft annually by 2028. Simple Flying has already reported COMAC plans to deliver 50 C919s in 2025…. COMAC’s currently low production numbers, together with China’s massive and growing aviation market, mean that Chinese airlines will have no choice but to continue ordering Airbus and Boeing aircraft for a long time to come (including all of their widebody aircraft). Time will tell how fast COMAC can ramp up production to meet more and more of its domestic requires and produce surplus for export. The COMAC faces a potentially bright future because it is a Chinese aircraft. China now boasts one of the world’s largest airline markets (the United States retains the largest), meaning that there is plenty of domestic market potential even before considering exports.”

Tech:

I thought I ran this, but it doesn’t show up in search, so…

Tech: Of Sam Altman:

Tech: A good question:

NOTE I only had time to verify OpenAI’s logo….

The Bezzle: “After twelve years of writing about bitcoin, here’s how my thinking has changed” [Moneyness]. From 2024, still germane. “If you want to buy some bitcoins, go right ahead. We can even help by regulating the trading venues to make it safe. But don’t force others to play. Alas, that seems to be where we are headed. There is a growing effort to arm-twist the rest of society into joining in by having governments acquire bitcoins, in the U.S.’s case a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The U.S. government has never entered the World Series of Poker. Nor has it gone to Vegas to bet billions to tax payer funds on roulette or built a strategic Powerball ticket reserve, but it appears to be genuinely entertaining the idea of rolling the dice on Bitcoin.” And: “Bitcoin is an incredibly infectious early-bird game, one that after sixteen years continues to find a constant stream of new recruits. How contagious? I originally estimated in a 2022 post, Three potential paths for the price of bitcoin, that adoption wouldn’t rise above 10%-15% of the global population, but I may have been underestimating its transmissibility…. It begins with a small strategic reserve of a few billion dollars. It ends with the Department of Bitcoin Price Appreciation being allocated 50% of yearly tax revenues to make the number go up, to the detriment of infrastructure like roads, hospitals, and law enforcement. At that point we’ve entered a dystopia in which society rapidly deteriorates because we’ve all become obsessed on a bet.” • Sadly, “early bird game” is undefined. Readers?

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 45 Fear (previous close: 44 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 47 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 4 at 2:10:42 PM ET.

Rapture Index: Closes down one on Food Supply. “The lack of activity has downgraded this category” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 180. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • This is a tough crowd. Surely Trump’s first month brought the Rapture closer?

Gallery

“Dolní Vĕstonice Portrait Head: The oldest known human portrait in the world” [LiveScience]. “This sculpture, discovered at the archaeological site of Dolní Vĕstonice in the Czech Republic in the 1920s, is considered the oldest surviving portrait of a person anywhere in the world, at 26,000 years old…. Carved with stone tools out of mammoth ivory, the tiny head measures just 1.9 inches (4.8 centimeters) tall and 1 inch (2.4 cm) wide. The sculpture appears to represent a woman’s face, with engraved eyes, a dimpled chin, and a raised nose and mouth. She may be wearing her hair in an updo or under a hat. Unlike other objects from the site — such as the Venus of Vĕstonice, which lacks facial features — this face seems to be individualized, making it the earliest known depiction of a specific person.” Also in the camp: “In one of these burials, covered in red ocher and arrayed with 10 drilled fox teeth, excavators discovered the skeleton of a middle-aged woman in 1949. Her skull was asymmetrical, potentially due to a traumatic childhood injury. When researchers used forensic techniques to reconstruct the woman’s face from the skull in 2018, they discovered it was very similar to the tiny ivory carving, whose left eye is significantly smaller than the right…. [T]his little head carved from mammoth ivory is likely the earliest personal portrait in the world.” • Here she is:

Zeitgeist Watch

“What’s Up With All the Sex Parties?” [The Atlantic]. ” learned that “play parties” can take place in people’s homes, but many happen under the auspices of private clubs. I reached out to a number of prominent ones, wondering if the sex-club boom was real, and what actually goes on at them. One of my major findings: People, especially rich people, come up with extremely elaborate justifications for getting laid. To be clear, these clubs are not brothels—guests have sex with one another, not with the club’s employees. Some say that they are putting on performances of ‘high erotic art’; others want to promote ‘equitable pleasure.’ They all try to sell erotic experimentation less as a means of gratification than as a moral virtue. They are creating, they insist, not so much a venue for sex as a gathering space of ‘like-minded individuals.’ People who are ‘liberated’ from social mores. People who think differently. People for whom the normal rules don’t apply. Snctm, a members-only sex club in Beverly Hills inspired by the movie Eyes Wide Shut, opened about a decade ago, and growth ‘was slow and steady’ at first, Robert Artés, the club’s managing director, told me. ‘But the last three to four years, there’s been tremendous growth in this space. Snctm members pay $12,500 or more a year for access to masquerade parties that can cost upwards of $2,000 a ticket.” • The rich are different…

“What ‘Boy-Friendly’ Changes Look Like at Every Grade Level” [EducationWeek]. “n Boys’ Latin’s lower, or elementary, school, the most noticeable difference in scheduling was adding a second recess in the morning. Before the official start of the school day, students can now play outside with their friends from 7:30 a.m. to 7:50 a.m. Gregory Schnitzlein, the head of the lower school, said most students participate—a ‘huge win’ for both the boys and their teachers, he added. A few boys, notoriously late in years past, now routinely get to school well before class starts. They don’t want to miss out on playing pick-up soccer games. And the boys who take advantage of early-morning recess tend to start class calmer and more alert, Schnitzlein said. In general, boys tend to have a much harder time than girls sitting still in class, according to a nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey of K-12 teachers. While about 4 in 10 teachers indicated that both boys and girls ‘sometimes’ struggled with sitting still, 51 percent said boys ‘often’ or ‘always’ have a hard time sitting still—compared to 18 percent who said the same about girls. That could help explain why teachers punish boys more frequently than their female classmates, beginning as early as preschool and continuing through high school.”

News of the Wired

“Exploring the boundary of quantum correlations with a time-domain optical processor” [Science]. From the Abstract: “Contextuality is a hallmark feature of the quantum theory that captures its incompatibility with any noncontextual hidden-variable model. The Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ)–type paradoxes are proofs of contextuality that reveal this incompatibility with deterministic logical arguments…. We demonstrate [a GHZ-type paradox] with a time-domain fiber optical platform and recover the quantum prediction in a 37-dimensional setup based on high-speed modulation, convolution, and homodyne detection of time-multiplexed pulsed coherent light. By proposing and studying a strong form of contextuality in high-dimensional Hilbert space, our results pave the way for the exploration of exotic quantum correlations with time-multiplexed optical systems.” • I’m sure this means something. But what?

“A computer can never be held accountable” [Simon Willison]. ” This legendary page from an internal IBM training in 1979 could not be more appropriate for our new age of AI.” • And the original and its author are long gone. Presumably, their COBOL code “lives” on…

* * *

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 CM and MB:

CM writes: “Please see attached, ‘From somewhere near Pittsburgh.’ It was in the ballpark of a hundred pounds of edible material. ‘All fungi are edible. Some fungi are only edible once.’ –Terry Pratchett. Chicken of the Woods, but more like a dinosaur!

* * *

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About Lambert Strether

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

Subscribe to Post Comments
98 comments

    1. Mo's Bike Shop

      Well of course the first inspiration is HAL 9000, these are fanbois.

      I see a camera aperture as well. Perhaps a metaphor for the their method of primary accumulation?

      Reply ↓
  2. Jason Boxman

    Reports from western NC. FEMA kicked people out in the cold, in late January. According to The Mountaineer “The clock ran out on hundreds of families who lost their homes”. FEMA ended the vouchers. There was “massive confusion” about shifting deadlines.

    Meanwhile my parents tenant needs a few extra days on rent. Unexpected medical bills from last week. Wait until Wednesday to deposit please.

    America is going great.

    Reply ↓
    1. JBird4049

      >>>FEMA ended the vouchers. There was “massive confusion” about shifting deadlines.

      How nice. It’s like they aren’t even trying to hide their contempt for Americans in need, but I’m sure that Prime Minister Netanyahu will be successful in getting a few more billions of dollars from President Trump.

      Reply ↓
  3. vao

    Why do all the AI logos look like butt holes?

    Personally, I think they all look like representations of black holes — vortices of super-high gravity that suck in all matter and light that happen to be close by.

    Reply ↓
    2. Mikel

      They are supposed to be like “spirals”.
      And then we’re supposed extrapolate all that symbolizes with their BS.

      Reply ↓
    4. mary jensen

      Why do all the AI logos look like butt holes?

      “Keep your eye on the doughnut, not on the hole.” – David Lynch

      Reply ↓
  4. Mark Gisleson

    “A computer can never be held accountable”

    Does this mean that a computer is a corporation?

    Also, DeepSeek’s logo is a blue whale…curled up to form a circle—but it’s not at all sphincter-like!

    Reply ↓
    1. flora

      Or does that mean a computer and code are a property, like a car, whose manufacturer/coder/owner can be sued for damages caused by faulty build quality or use? Inquiring minds…. / ;)

      Reply ↓
  5. Neutrino

    Boy-friendly school planning, where was that in days of yore? The single morning recess helped so many, and the teachers benefitted from that fresh air and a type of relaxation, too!

    Reply ↓
  6. Socal Rhino

    Just going to speculate: if Elon’s team is “writing code” involving the Treasury payment system, it is query scripts to screen and sort data. I’m not 25 or an autistic prodigy, but that’s the sort of thing I’d do if I was trying to get a handle on a mass of data. I say that without any knowledge of the actual data structures, meaning as well informed as anyone else commenting at this point.

    Reply ↓
  7. t

    Is time to give Trump and his admin credit for popularizing Diet Coke?
    Or should we wait until he puts something on Truth Social?

    Too bad those sad sacks on the Church Commitee didn’t have Elon to show them the way.

    Reply ↓
    1. Carolinian

      Taibbi–who was working with Musk for awhile but not now–thinks a new Church Committee is exactly where we are headed and that this is necessary to dial back the below the radar hijinks of the FBI, CIA etc. It’s bizarre to some of us that the outfit that once persecuted Civil Rights figures and the political left is now being defended as though they are some kind of heroes fighting fascism. Do they know anything at all about the bureau history and the man the FBI headquarters is named after? There’s a ton of sleaze in that history.

      Reply ↓
  8. hamstak

    On “early bird game”: one interpretation is “first-adapter” advantage; another is Ponzi (or some similar) scheme.

    On the orifice/sphinctral-adjacency of AI logos: if you have to ask…

    Reply ↓
    1. lyman alpha blob

      That was my interpretation too. Those who get in early will get out with the goldmine. All others get the shaft. If you didn’t acquire your bitcoin by mining it, you are probably [family blog]ed at some point.

      There have been lots of rumors about a relatively few bitcoin “whales” holding the vast majority of the coin which keeps the price up. I’m pretty sure that’s also how Sam Banking Fraud ran his FTX scheme. Well that, and spending other people’s money.

      Reply ↓
    3. Skk

      Early Bird ? One measure is how it costs have changed. I remember when Bitcoin cost 10 bucks or so in 2011. It was hard to buy, “meet me in dark back alley type of stuff” and given the cost of gas and the chance of fraud I gave it a pass. It was easier by 2016, now around 1000. By 2018, in the Covid times, you could buy it online for 5000. It’s 100k now but who knows where it goes.
      Investopedia says it opened at zero then 10 cents in 2009

      In terms of quantity, there’s 1 million left to mine,19.9 million have been mined, that is 95% have been coined. So from that perspective it’s late in the game,.
      Otoh the time to mine per coin gets exponentially longer … The last coin will take literally forever to mine, so yeah it’s still early in the game I suppose.

      I’m only talking of BTC. Shitcoins are another kettle of fish. There’s no algorithm dictating anything about those.

      Reply ↓
  9. steppenwolf fetchit

    Here’s a post from the AgedLikeMilk subreddit called: How it started versus how its going. Its a pre-and-post election post by a Puristocrat who bragged about how she was too good and pure to vote for Harris and who now demands that the Democrats ” do something”. Some of the commenters to it are noting that it is a near-perfect “Leopards ate my face” type of post.

    Here is the link.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/agedlikemilk/comments/1ih844b/how_it_started_vs_how_its_going/

    Reply ↓
    1. lyman alpha blob

      “Puristocrat”, huh?

      You do know the commentariat here is filled with a whole bunch of “pox on both your houses” types, right?

      Reply ↓
      1. steppenwolf fetchit

        Yes, “puristocrat”. I think its a perfectly cromulent word. Perhaps I have just embiggened the language one word embiggender.

        The Democrats and the “pox on both your houses” people both helped create the vacuum which has sucked Trump into power.

        Whatever new power movement arises, it won’t be from the Puristocratic Left.

        Reply ↓
    2. albrt

      I didn’t vote for Harris either, but I’m having trouble understanding why anybody would expect a Democrat to do anything whether they voted for Harris or not.

      Reply ↓
        1. ambrit

          I never suspected that “Creepy” Joe was a Cthulhu Cultist.
          “Why vote for the lesser evil?”
          By voting for The Orange Satan, we were voting for “The Lessor Evil.”
          Moral of the story is: “Abandon Hope For Change All Ye Who Join This Party.”

          Reply ↓
      2. Dr. John Carpenter

        And this whole “you didn’t vote for Harris, now enjoy Trump” line of voter blaming (which I expect to see more of) is a nifty way to deflect from that fact. Not to mention I still think this liberal thing of smugly gloating when people who didn’t vote the correct way get hurt is really gross.

        Reply ↓
        1. Lefty Godot

          One thing you can be sure of, it’s never their fault for nominating a crappy candidate. It’s always our fault because their candidate didn’t get enough votes. They really need to close up shop and let a real opposition party have an opportunity to take their place.

          Reply ↓
    3. Pat

      Full disclosure, Trump and Musk have gone fuller bore on burning it all down than I expected. And it is scary. That said anyone that thinks that Harris’ was going to do more than continue the war mongering, destruction of civil rights and yes general only speed limited limited destruction of the US was just delusional.

      I said it before and say it now, the only real choice was neither of the above. America had no real option but flavors of horrible.

      Reply ↓
      1. jhallc

        Taibbi and Kirn on the latest America This Week suggest that the US Empire has entered into a “Yeltsin” moment. Not sure about that but, if Musk climbs up onto a tank we may have arrived.

        Reply ↓
        1. Martin Oline

          To complete the moment, the tank will have to fire shells at something, as happened in Moscow when they shot at the Duma. Would it be the Treasury building? Any suggestions for targets?

          Reply ↓
        2. Daniil Adamov

          Musk isn’t Yeltsin, he’s more like Berezovsky: oligarch promoted to government fixer. That story did not end well for Berezovsky. What power he had on the national scale was his because someone with real power gave it to him. If, say, President Vance decides to crush him a few years from now, it won’t be very hard. At least that’s if the analogy holds; I’ll grant that the American system is different and, for one thing, the rich are more entrenched and better protected. Still doubt Musk’s political longevity, though.

          Reply ↓
          1. mary jensen

            It won’t be a tank he’ll climb up onto, it’ll be 1) A Tesla truck or 2) Trump’s shoulders

            If it’s 2) we’ll have a new take on seeing further from atop the shoulders of giants…and of course Musk will be serious about it. Musk has finally found his cosmic father in Trump; the father who loves and ‘appreciates’ and values him, the father who wants him around, the father with whom he can exchange confidences, the father who affirms his ‘genius’.

            Reply ↓
  10. DJG, Reality Czar

    Repeating the Anthony Ali twiXt:

    If China pulls a DeepSeek on the Adobe creative suite they’ll have us singing Red Sun in the Sky by Q2 2025

    Adobe has gotten weirder and weirder. The tools, the menu bars, the dinky icons, and the displays have gotten to be much too hard to discern: I keep wondering who the basic Adobe page is designed for. Some imaginary customer who designs web pages as a hobby? Someone who thinks that all of the warring doodads are “Freedom to Choose”?

    The files are memory hogs, requiring amounts of memory well beyond what should be required.

    And the subscription model just plain stinks.

    Keep us posted on the Adobe soon-to-be-merited meltdown.

    Reply ↓
    1. lyman alpha blob

      Agreed. After a few years I had gotten somewhat adept at manipulating a pdf. Then I came to work one day and they had changed everything for no apparent reason, and all our IT people could do was shrug.

      Look up “crapification” on the interwebs and you’ll find the definition on a pdf you can’t open without reading a 649 page instruction manual.

      Reply ↓
    2. lambert strether

      > The files

      Every time I upgrade and have to convert my ginormous catalog, my heart is in my mouth in case it corrupts. Is there a reason they can’t use a normal database ?

      Reply ↓
        1. Terry Flynn

          Well played!

          I’m happier daily by moving to Linux. However I’m very cognizant of one or two programs I had to use Windows to run when I was a “proper person” so I understand the bind a lot of people find themselves in. A couple of former colleagues have taken early retirement due to the terrible state the field is in.

          Reply ↓
      2. Martin Oline

        I know how you feel. I need to buy a huge external drive to keep my stuff from disappearing one of these days. One day soon it will be I who vaporizes so perhaps not to worry so much. . .

        Reply ↓
    1. JBird4049

      So, it has nothing to do with Kennedy’s qualifications or fitness for the office. It’s just partisan kabuki where they pretend to be doing their jobs, and we pretend to believe them.

      Reply ↓
      1. GramSci

        The US Senate is in middle stage dementia; too addled to deliberate, but still capable of initiating undeliberated action.

        Reply ↓
  12. Bill B

    “Outgoing DNC Chief Jaime Harrison says he thinks Kamala should run again and can win in 2028.” At least Hillary went away after losing. But Kamala is unburdened by the past, apparently.

    Reply ↓
    1. flora

      Did Hillary go away? I seem to remember she was around . . . a lot. She didn’t run again but she was/is a ghost in the machine, imo I see Donna Brazile as a Clinton placeholder. / ;)

      Reply ↓
    2. Pat

      Hillary didn’t go away, in fact there is a bit of circumstantial evidence that Team Hillary and Bill backed the Harris run in 2020. There were some early attempts to see if she was viable. Unfortunately she was still deeply disliked by half the country. Maybe if Covid had happened earlier we would have seen a primary run, but the machine had already moved on to Harris by then.

      I don’t think Harris will be back. But then there was Biden.

      Reply ↓
      1. JBird4049

        Harris might be put into the race to block anotherreformist candidate like Bernie Sanders. Remember, while having Biden win the election was a goal, the goal was to block even a moderate candidate like Sanders from winning. Even if Harris is still loathed by too many voters to win, if she can block another anti establishment candidate, she is a possible tool.

        Reply ↓
      2. griffen

        Vampires aren’t so easily dispensed as it turns out. Still able to have some media whoring attention grabbing headlines and it’s…2025…FFS ( Clinton specific I’ll add fwiw )

        Adding, looked at the above images tweeted about DNC machinations. In a future world, former chairpersons like Donna Brazile and Jamie Harrison can comfort themselves with a redeeming thought or redeeming soliloquy…Hey we tried didn’t we ?

        Failure is never a disqualification it appears.

        Reply ↓
  13. Wukchumni

    Dolni looks to be my grandmother to the thousandth power, yet doesnt possess Czech cheeks, so now I’m not so certain.

    Reply ↓
  14. Mikel

    “How Democratic Gen Z activists lost the Gen Z vote”

    That was all over the place and demonstrated they have zero clue.
    They just care about_________(fill in the blank with what people in many groups and of many ages care about).

    They are so preoccupied with how to pry the youth away from the influence of community, etc and toward the influence of the WEF and corporations that they’ve created more categories to box people in than they can keep up with.

    Reply ↓
  15. Stephen V

    This looks like the 2024 post:
    https://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2024/12/after-twelve-years-of-writing-about.html?m=1
    Love this ”
    The U.S. government has never entered the World Series of Poker. Nor has it gone to Vegas to bet billions to tax payer funds on roulette or built a strategic Powerball ticket reserve, but it appears to be genuinely entertaining the idea of rolling the dice on Bitcoin.” We shall see! Maybe they’ll lift up a marble slab at the Fed to bury their new Strategeric Reserve?

    Reply ↓
  16. ChrisFromGA

    Re: DNC meeting:

    Dems do the “Cupid Shuffle” while D.O.G.E. burns down D.C.

    Film at Eleven!

    And don’t miss our late night special, America Held Hostage, Day 15: Dolts Occupying Government Extralegally!

    Reply ↓
  17. KLG

    “Funny all the airline crashes of late”

    Two years ago one of my best friends crashed his plane a few hundred yards short of the runway on a perfectly clear April morning. He and his dog were killed on impact. A Special Forces operative medically retired due to injuries sustained in a very famous American operation about which a movie was made, he had thousands of hours pilot time and more than 400 parachute jumps. An Angel Flight stalwart. He did triathlons like most of us stroll through the neighborhood on a pleasant evening. He was the most physically and mentally competent man I have ever known. He also had a nasty bout with COVID-19 early in the pandemic. I am convinced that affected his spatial awareness. There is no other reasonable explanation. And I am still very angry at the world because of this.

    Reply ↓
    1. MicaT

      This one is probably not due to pilot error.
      Aircraft on the ground have people who guide them to the exact location as the pilots don’t know where to stop ( there are usually marks on the ground) and have very poor to non existent side back view of the wings for example.

      If you’ve never seen it, here is a short video on how it’s done. Often there are 3 people. One at the end of each wing and 1 in the front. The pilots rely on those ground operation people to keep the plane from hitting anything.

      https://m.youtube.com/shorts/2nehzeSF3s0

      Reply ↓
  22. The Rev Kev

    ‘There is a growing effort to arm-twist the rest of society into joining in by having governments acquire bitcoins, in the U.S.’s case a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.’

    What if – stay with me here – what if the government starts to accumulate Bitcoin and then uses it to pay down the national debt. Is there enough Bitcoin to pay down about $37 trillion worth of debt? I’m sure that being a Trump government they would accept Bitcoin as a valid form of payment. Not sure if they would accept Bitcoin to pay taxes with however.

    Reply ↓
    1. jhallc

      Time to get all those big mainframes over at the Pentagon and the NSA churning out “Bitcoin” to pay for the next regime change and new F-35’s.

      Reply ↓
    1. ChrisFromGA

      I try not to rant here as to not wear out my welcome, so I’ll be brief, but I feel like this is the last straw.

      We’re literally a country that rounds up people groups and puts them on reservations, again. We’ve gone back not just to the WWI world but all the way back to the 1800s. Might makes right.

      Trying to stay objective, I think Trump may have really effed up here. His base voted for MAGA, America First. Not getting bogged down for another 15 years in the ME. This isn’t strategic, either. It looks like just a blatant land grab for his developer cronies.

      Reply ↓
      1. JBird4049

        Moving, killing, and enslaving the locals to steal their land has been the American standard practice for four centuries.

        If the United States did not steal the land, we either supplied our satraps with the means to do if they were good minions, or overthrew the government or just murdered the leaders if not. What matters is that the American corporations and oligarchs make as much profit without any hindrance. President Trump is just following it like the other forty-five men did.

        Reply ↓
        1. timo maas

          Yup, and the Kool-Aid must be tasting as good as ever, considering the ammount of people that just can not understand those simple things.

          Reply ↓
  24. Durans

    A few of those logos appear to be riffs on the “Aperture Science” logo from the video game “Portal”. The games exists in the apocalyptic “Half-Life” universe, and Portal’s main/sole antagonist is the homicidal AI GLadOS.

    Reply ↓
    1. cfraenkel

      Plus the off-screen commentary from Cave Johnson, who in hindsight sounded a bit less deranged than our Pres Trusk. : )

      Reply ↓
    2. Camacho

      Everything they do is a science fiction knockoff. There is not a trace of originality in the Tech Bro Cinematic Universe. Now that I think of it, maybe all those logos are AI generated.

      Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev

      Probably more to the point they saw how things like NGOs are used in countries like the Ukraine and Georgia to destabilize a country that have their funding come direct from the US and/or the EU and want none of that to happen in Greenland. Otherwise they would end up with protestors in the street waving US flags with professional signs written in English and paid helpers flown in to help direct and coordinate those protestors as well as pay them. Civil strife is something that Greenland does not need.

      Reply ↓
      1. heh

        Considering the money that went to Ukraine and Georgia, Greenland would be a bargain. Georgia probably has more NGO employees than Greenland has citizens (they do come at a smaller price per capita though).

        Reply ↓
  28. Jason Boxman

    How I Learned That the Problem in My Marriage Was Me (NY Times via archive.ph)

    25 minute read

    One thing I’ve learned from being married to my wife, Jess, who is a couples therapist, is how vast the distance is between the masks people show to the world and the messy realities that live behind them. Every couple knows its own drama, but we still fall prey to the illusion that all other couples have seamlessly satisfying relationships. The truth about marriage — including my own — is that even the most functional couples are merely doing the best they can with the lives that have been bestowed on them.

    Reply ↓
  29. johnnyme

    Latest salvo in the trade war with China:

    USPS temporarily suspends accepting packages from China and Hong Kong

    The United States Postal Service announced Tuesday night that it is temporarily suspending accepting packages sent from China and Hong Kong until further notice.

    The suspension is effective immediately, the USPS said. Letters and flats are not included in the suspension, it said.

    The postal service did not provide a reason for the suspension or say how long it expects it to last.

    Nothing posted on the U.S. Postal Service’s website yet.

    Reply ↓
  31. AG

    re: The Hill on Tulsi Gabbard “cabale” (aka sell-out)

    “(…)
    Gabbard’s nomination was considered to be in peril late last week after her tumultuous confirmation hearing seemed to make the path to confirmation rockier.

    Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), an ex-Marine intelligence officer, appeared irked while the former Hawaii congresswoman refused to say whether National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden is a traitor. And Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) had last week indicated she was concerned about Gabbard’s views on government surveillance.

    But by Monday top Republicans were optimistic Gabbard would advance out of committee. Young had a series of phone calls with Vance over the weekend, and he told reporters he spoke with Trump, whose campaign he never formally endorsed in 2024. Young told reporters that the president and others didn’t threaten any retaliation if he opposed Gabbard.

    “I said, ‘How important is this to you, Mr. President?’ He said, ‘It’s important, but … we’re going to work together on all kinds of other things to make America great again.’ I told him I need reassurances, and those were delivered.”

    “Never. Never an intimation,” Young told reporters regarding potential retaliation. “There was never an intimation that there would be a problem.”

    In a lengthy statement on Tuesday, the Indiana Republican said he secured a number of commitments from Gabbard regarding deterring Snowden-like whistleblowers, not pardoning Snowden and working to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
    (…)”

    Section 702, via Wiki:

    “FISA Section 702 allows the National Security Agency to conduct searches of foreigners’ communications without any warrant. The process incidentally collects information from Americans.[92][93][94][28] Section 702 of FISA more specifically “brings under FISC jurisdiction various intelligence-collection programs that target categories of non-Americans outside the United States. These foreigners also communicate with Americans, so the latter are incidentally intercepted.”[28] The FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 extends Section 702 for six years, to December 31, 2023, and most notably included new restrictions on querying surveillance databases, prohibited the resumption of certain types of collection about a target that were not directly addressed to or from that target, unless Congress approved such collection within 30 days of having been notified of the resumption, and provided for additional reporting by the Executive Branch of surveillance activities.[95][96] Many privacy and civil liberties advocates argued that the reforms enacted by the extension bill were inadequate,[97] but their arguments were successfully opposed by the government.[98][99]

    The January 2018 law also made unauthorized removal and retention of classified information of the United States government a felony crime punishable by five years imprisonment and/or a fine.”

    Reply ↓

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