We very much appreciate the reader response to our post last month, Seeking Reader Help in Finding New Site Contributor(s) to Fill Lambert’s Yellow Waders, since Lambert is retiring at the end of this month or shortly thereafter. We wanted to give a progress report as well as solicit additional help.
The good news is that Conor had already agreed to fill Lambert’s regular site slots, but we have been looking for other writers to reduce the load on him, introduce some new voices and perspectives, and allow for redundancy in since inevitably, Shit Happens.
However, that still would have resulted in the loss of Lambert’s much beloved Water Cooler and particularly his Covid and now pandemic coverage.
But we may have a solution! Our esteemed regular contributor KLG has offered to produce a once-a-week 2:00 PM feature, which we will call “Coffee Break,” since Water Cooler was a Lambert special. KLG’s Coffee Break will focus on medical science and medical policy news, and keep on top of events on the infectious disease front.
So that means we have the potential for other topical Coffee Break features over the week. For instance, we have been discussing with one candidate the possibility of a arms industry/defense spending/defense policy, since actual and potential wars are important in and of themselves and also driving other fractures (see in particular in Europe, where in one of many examples, France has been unable to pass a budget due to fundamental disagreements over guns v. butter). Lambert’s work and his Water Cooler had a strong US political focus, so we could offer extra depth there, beyond our daily survey in Links, via a Coffee Break feature. Alternatively, due to the way geopolitical events are more and more driving economic and finance developments, we’ve somewhat de-emphasized some finance and economics matters. So one or even more Coffee Breaks on this beat could help rebalance our coverage.
Finally, we have still not sorted out our new roster. We have had some promising candidates put up their hands for writing articles. We are also in discussions about Links. So if you are game or know someone who might be, there is still time to toss a hat into the ring!1 If you are game, please write Yves at yves-at-nakedcapitalism-dot-com and put “Site Writer” in the subject line. Thanks!
Again, thanks for your help and support. Lambert also very much appreciates the kind words about his work.
______
1 Although we got a good level of responses to our initial appeal, it was a bit surprising, after our emphasis that the ideal candidate was likely to be a journalist or other professional writer accustomed to regular deadlines, to see recommendations of prominent YouTubers and podcasters. While it was flattering to see so many think that well-established figures might want to also operate under the Naked Capitalism banner, videos and podcasts are a completely different genre than writing, even before getting to the deadline and production demands.
Gonna need something that accompanies this new, weekly feature. Good coffee and what… doughnuts, pastries, an afternoon serving of cookies? My usual choice is oatmeal, fwiw.
Looking forward to the changes and developments….just not so much that Lambert will be going, going and gone.
Yeah I get it…..I’m PhD not clinically trained so will need to ask friends for translation now more often but that’s life!
Lambert is the Chef Ding of enlightened snark – an irreplaceable quality. But the World has changed. I see it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air.
What are the covariants of coming selection? Do Yellow Waders work when the Devil goes waterskiing? They put a fire hose on the honey wagon of fiat information and threw the pump in reverse.
Cap-R Resilience is woven in today’s Links. But resilience is a return to what was. I have watched Lambert’s relationship with his gift of snark evolve over the years. And the baleen approach could be overwhelmed, the number of Twitter users is an order of magnitude larger than when Lambert joined NC, amplitude up but coherence down. What the Water Cooler was and has been may not replicate.
Conor and KLG are proven. I’m not worried about the foundation stones. But how many rooms are in the House of Polycrises? A clear example: as our complex national system is collapsing, state policies become more important than national as to where people want to live. Or medical – in the past two months, our periodontist died, our dentist had open-heart surgery, and Janet’s newly installed Medical Practitioner has a blanket refusal to prescribe the one medicine that keeps her neck in-line. Going to Mexico for care is now on our radar. In these conditions, understanding unipolar policy is no longer sufficient.
In such conditions, the variety, range, and veracity of the Commentariat is an irreplacable resource. .
I’ll miss Lambert’s oft hidden in plain sight word snickering…
In the ongoing saga of the hunt for good snark, I propose:
‘Mirth the Merciless Mondays’
The question would be : Will these contributions and posts be better and more accurate than what an informed reader could read at NEJM, for example.
This is a blog, not a peer-reviewed journal, so I don’t understand you imposing standards on us that exceed those of even the well respected medical newsletter STAT. However, we have ventured to criticize NEJM, see:
KLG is a professor of medicine, so he is a subject matter expert, and has been posting here for >2 years.
Indeed. Although I can eventually get to the key points of a dense medical paper thx to medical friends and former colleagues, I hugely value the translation by people like KLG and ignacio to speed up the process.
Just to give you some perspective. I attend 3 Journal Clubs a week. 2 virtual on zoom – one local. A Journal Club is an organized, usually weekly or monthly, discussion of recent medical papers and journal articles attended by medical providers. Great emphasis is placed on methods in the papers and how medical statistics are used to reach the conclusions. The MDs that attend these regularly are among the brightest I have ever known. The choice of articles is distributed several days/weeks ahead of time and every participant is expected to have really dived deep and ready for battle. Unlike Twitter and social media during the pandemic, there is no censorship allowed, skepticism is the default, and no line of discovery is ever shot down. But you best be fully prepared when you pipe in – hard questions and intense back and forth are common. Intense discussions, often very loud and animated, will occur and anyone claiming “feeling unsafe” and “micro-aggressions” and all that crap will never be allowed back.
This is what we call science. The freedom of speech is essential for it to fully work. One lesson I hope we have all learned from the past 4 years of censorship is how easily science is distorted into $ceince TM – by censorship.
Articles from NEJM used to be mainstays in journal clubs all across the country. I would dare say that I have not seen a NEJM article in a journal club, either my own 3 or the probably 15-20 others I have attended in the past 3 years or so. The articles are skewed heavily to new Pharma items that have not been tested well, the research indicates they are not tested well, and the articles are clearly written by Pharma ghost writers. Invariably, when these interventions finally come out, they are hideously expensive, thereby unusable in our climate today, and then often come with lots of problems ( the safety part of the research is laughable). The COVID vaccines are a classic example. The initial NEJM article was quite scary in what was left off, etc, all the while the editors were calling the vaccine “a triumph”.
NEJM has also gotten into a nasty habit of filling its pages with all kinds of politics and advocacy. And this has at times bled into the original research articles. All about wokeism and at times is just humiliating as a physician. Their review articles and case studies are now at a kindergarten level. I am a subscriber to NEJM but it is now the same way I subscribe to the NYT – it is a kind of sense of duty to the past – we read what was once great – but we know that we are being lied to every other paragraph. So again, I am fairly certain it has been 2-3 years that a NEJM has come up in any journal club I have attended. I never hear the student or residents highlighting it on rounds, etc. It has become a legacy joke. And that is very sad. The same can be said for JAMA, LANCET etc who have equally destroyed their reputations. BMJ is the lone holdout.
You have to ascended a senior level to be one of the MDs to choose articles. And the presenter really has to have it together. There is no mercy shown during the presentations etc. On 5 occasions over the past several years – I have eschewed the scientific research entirely and distributed one of KLG articles from here. In one of the top 10 Internal Medicine departments in the country. And the response has been incredible and the debates very engaging. No one, and I mean no one, has ever said a word about the choice of doing so. Indeed they seem to relish these – they are true inquiry free of all the junk in the journals.
The NEJM brand, like so much else in our society, has besmirched itself and is no longer the cache it once was. The only ones quoting it now are usually outlets like the NYT etc in an attempt to mislead their audience with propaganda. It really is quite sad.
FWIW I became sceptical of the big 4 many years ago. I started reading very specialist journals. Some are so full of technical blurb that I need a clinical friend to translate.
I’m glad I can spot trash but it shouldn’t have to be like this.
I would love it if you would do a weekly missive!
Gunna call dibs on the title ‘Conor’s Coffee Corner’.
Fantastic news! I love KLG’s contributions.
Periodic thematic coffee breaks is a great idea!
Sigh…lambert is irreplaceable. A star is slipping below the horizon, not to rise again.
Elen síla lúmenn’ omentielvo.
It’s wonderful news that Naked Cap will continue to be a beacon of pandemic information. While I continue moping and staring at my shoes that Lambert has found another, I’m enormously relieved that I’ll still have one dependable source for updates on this literally life-and-death topic.
And of course, an ultimate thank you to Yves for creating and lovingly maintaining this entire site. In today’s online information sewer, it stands alone.
Thank you, KLG! Very reassuring to know that the COVID coverage will continue. I’m just an ordinary civilian here and fortunate to still be a COVID virgin as far as I know. I know I’ve been at least as lucky as smart: part of that luck has been access to information that allows me to be smart about when not to risk exposure. I’m also looking forward to in-depth coverage of the apparently inevitable bird flu catastrophe.
(Um, wow. Just reread that last sentence above and it’s kind of jarring, isn’t it? But such are the times we live in.)
I will miss Lambert’s Water Cooler immensely. Congratulations on retiring Lambert!
This is outstanding news, to the extent that anything without Lambert can be considered outstanding.
I appreciate the efforts to have continuity on syndemic coverage, which has become one of the most valuable features of your site and is literally saving lives I’m sure. I think a weekly cadence for this will be just about right.
Thank you so much!
Brainstorm ideas-
A dedicated Naked Capitalism songs thread
With Wukchumni, Antifa, others dropping some of their latest stuff.
I realize these aren’t for everyone so having a dedicated weekly song-a-thon might allow those who are interested to find them all in one place. And those who aren’t to ignore.
Looking forward to the formal ceremony at which the yellow waders will be officially transferred — or will they be retired, in the manner of retiring the jersey of a uniquely irreplaceable hockey player, by raising the garment to the rafters?
“The good news is that Conor had already agreed to fill Lambert’s regular site slots…”
I’m really happy to hear that. I’m a big fan of Conor’s pieces (and also those of Nick).
Oh yes, me too to both of those.
God Bless. Nothing will replace 2pm water cooler.