By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Fowl Music of the Day

I considered jackdaws due to Konrad Lorenz’s fantastic King Solomon’s Ring, which I learn after I was fairly younger (and unaware of Lorenz’s views on “social decline”).

Eurasian Jackdaw, Marche, Italy. A fairly duet, though quick.

Politics

“However what’s authorities itself, however the biggest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“Right here’s meals for thought, had Ahab time to assume; however Ahab by no means thinks; he solely feels, feels, feels.” –Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“So lots of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are actually a rational administration of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

2024

“US creator Marianne Williamson proclaims plans to run for president in 2024” [Andalou Agency]. “US creator Marianne Williamson introduced Thursday that she is going to run for president in 2024. Williamson mentioned in an interview with Medill Information Service that she is going to run for the Democratic nomination. The progressive Democrat additionally ran for president in 2020. ‘I wouldn’t be operating for president if I didn’t imagine I might contribute to harnessing the collective sensibility that I really feel is our biggest hope presently,’ she informed the information service. She is predicted to formally announce her candidacy on March 4.” • “Collective sensibility” is, I suppose, as wise a mannequin as the rest one reads.

“US presidential candidates ought to take psychological competency check: Trump” [Andalou Agency]. Trump: “ANYBODY operating for the Workplace of President of the USA ought to comply with take a full & full Psychological Competency Check concurrently (or earlier than!) with the announcement that she or he is operating, & likewise, however to a considerably lesser extent, comply with a check which might show that you’re bodily able to doing the job. Being an impressive President requires nice psychological acuity & bodily stamina. For those who don’t have these qualities or traits, it’s probably you gained’t succeed. MAGA!” • Hmm. I ponder if he has anyone in thoughts. (This comes after Haley dinged him with a check for over-75s.

“Nikki Haley’s presidential bid: Lengthy shot or misplaced trigger?” [Yahoo News]. “some political analysts say Haley shouldn’t be written off. They argue {that a} potential grudge match between Trump and DeSantis might depart each frontrunners susceptible and create room for an alternate candidate to emerge from the fray. Haley is the best title to interrupt via in that circumstance, some argue, due to her political talent, conservative credentials and demographic attraction. However doubters say it will take a rare sequence of occasions for anybody aside from Trump or DeSantis to win the GOP nomination; even when that does occur, Haley will not be poised to take benefit. Critics from each side of the political spectrum argue that her waffling positions on Trump over time have left her with no constituency amongst Republican voters — each the MAGA base and people seeking to transfer on from Trumpism will probably view her with skepticism. Some additionally imagine that her race and gender might be an obstacle in a Republican Occasion that has turn out to be so strongly aligned with white grievance politics within the Trump period.”

“Buttigieg urges security modifications after fiery Ohio derailment” [Associated Press]. “Buttigieg mentioned railroads and tank automobile house owners ought to speed up their plan to improve the tank vehicles that haul flammable liquids like crude oil and ethanol by 2025 as an alternative of ready to adjust to the 2029 normal Congress finally accepted after regulators advised the sooner deadline. He additionally mentioned freight railroads ought to attain extra agreements to offer their staff with paid sick time to assist forestall fatigue. Railroad unions have additionally raised issues that automobile inspections are being rushed and preventative upkeep could also be getting uncared for after widespread job cuts within the trade lately that they are saying have made railroads riskier.” • Railroad unions additionally.” However not Mayo Pete! Someone ought to ask him if he thinks it’s a good suggestion that one individual drive a two-mile-long practice, as a result of that’s what the railroads need.

“Might a Trump grand juror’s feedback have an effect on doable Georgia expenses?” [Reuters]. ” Media interviews given by the foreperson of the Georgia grand jury that investigated former President Donald Trump’s try to overturn his 2020 election loss within the state current a public relations downside for prosecutors however needn’t cease them from bringing expenses if warranted, in accordance with authorized consultants. The foreperson, Emily Kohrs, was interviewed by quite a lot of U.S. information shops this week and supplied a uncommon window into the secretive course of during which members of the grand jury weigh proof and make suggestions to prosecutors on doable prison expenses. Kohrs, 30, supplied hints as to what the grand jury really useful in its report, most of which stays sealed, after it wrapped up its work in January. Kohrs informed CNN that ‘the massive title that everybody retains asking me about – I don’t assume you can be shocked.’” • Oh.

Republican Funhouse

Hawley is right:

The Republican Occasion could be the occasion of Ukraine and globalists or the occasion of East Palestine and dealing Individuals. Not each

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) February 24, 2023

Although the Reaganites gained’t prefer it a lot.

Democrats en Déshabillé

Affected person readers, plainly individuals are really studying the back-dated submit! However I’ve not up to date it, and there are lots of updates. So I should try this. –lambert

I’ve moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Occasion (“the Democrat Occasion is a rotting corpse that may’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated submit, to which I’ll periodically add materials, summarizing the addition right here in a “dwell” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It seems that defining the Democrat Occasion is, actually, a tough downside. I do assume the paragraph that follows is on level all the best way again to 2016, if not earlier than:

The Democrat Occasion is the political expression of the category energy of PMC, their base (lucidly defined by Thomas Frank in Hear, Liberal!). ; if the Democrat Occasion didn’t exist, the PMC must invent it. . (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” in fact.) Second, all of the working components of the Occasion reinforce one another. Depart apart characterizing the relationships between components of the Occasion (ka-ching, however not fully) these components comprise a community — a Flex Internet? An iron octagon? — of funders, distributors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with belongings within the press and the intelligence neighborhood.

Word, in fact, that the category energy of the PMC each expresses and is proscribed by different lessons; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial mannequin’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to thoughts. Suck up, kick down.

* * *

“How The Cool Child Of Progressive Politics Gambled It All Away” [FiveThirtyEight]. “There was the general public reckoning over McElwee’s fondness for betting on points and elections that Information For Progress polled on. There was his consulting work for Sam Bankman-Fried — the founding father of not too long ago bankrupt cryptocurrency trade FTX, who has since been indicted on fraud expenses. And there have been accusations of a straw-donor scheme — the place somebody pays one other individual to make donations on their behalf to keep away from limits on marketing campaign donations. (McElwee declined to be interviewed for this story.) After a tumultuous few weeks for the agency’s public picture, McElwee was out, the brand new guard was in, and so they have been cleansing home.” • Much more “cool children” in “progressive politics” took SBF’s cash. Who’re they?

Realignment and Legitimacy

“The MAGA evangelical revivalists are not silent concerning the Asbury Revival” [Current]. “Final week I questioned why the pro-Trump, Make America Nice Once more, Christian nationalist revivalists weren’t noticing the religious revival occurring at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. These folks imagine that the USA was based as a Christian nation and must be reclaimed as such… Many of those people are actually suggesting that the revival at Asbury is a solution to their prayers…. Don’t get me fallacious–I’m fully open to what’s taking place at Asbury College and I’m praying that this revival will bear a lot religious fruit within the lives of those Christian faculty college students and the individuals who they encounter alongside the street of life. On this sense, I’m a New Gentle! However I bristle after I see this religious stirring at a college similar to the one the place I’ve taught for 21 years getting repurposed for a political agenda.”

“Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod President Requires Excommunicating White Nationalists” [The Roys Report]. “In a letter dated Feb. 21, LCMS President Matthew Harrison mentioned he was ‘shocked to be taught not too long ago that just a few members of LCMS congregations have been propagating radical and unchristian ‘alt-right’ views through Twitter and different social media.’ He famous far-right members have been inflicting ‘native disruption’ for congregations and alleged that LCMS management and deaconesses had fallen sufferer to on-line threats, a few of which he described as ‘critical.’ ‘That is evil. We condemn it within the title of Christ,’ Harrison writes.”

#COVID19

Appears like “leveling off to a excessive plateau” throughout the board. (I nonetheless assume “One thing Terrible” is coming, nevertheless. I imply, apart from what we already learn about.) Keep protected on the market!

• Readers, for the reason that nationwide information programs in the USA are being vandalized, let’s begin accumulating hyperlinks to state information, too. If readers would ship me hyperlinks (see Plant under) to their favourite State and native dashboards/wastewater websites, that will be nice. Canadians, too! Or depart a hyperlink in Feedback.

Sources, United States (Nationwide): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, however nationwide information).

Sources, United States (Native): CA (dashboard), Marin; CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NM (dashboard); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OR (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater).

Sources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tricks to useful readers: Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Festoonic, FM, Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JF, Joe, John, JM (2), JW, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, otisyves, Petal (5), RK, RL, RM, Rod, tennesseewaltzer, Utah, Bob White. (Readers, when you depart your hyperlink in feedback, I credit score you by your deal with. For those who ship it to me through electronic mail, I take advantage of your initials (within the absence of a deal with. I’m not placing your deal with subsequent to your contribution as a result of I hope and count on the record can be lengthy, and I need it to be straightforward for readers to scan.)

• Extra like this, please! Whole: 1 6 11 18 20 22 26 27/50 (54% of US states). We should always record states that wouldn’t have Covid sources, or have stopped updating their websites, so others don’t look fruitlessly. Thanks!

Considering via the implications of this airborne pandemic for when the following one comes alongside:

A helpful perspective, especailly as we aren’t going to be sending the general public well being institution to the Hague anytime quickly (and don’t get me fallacious, that’s the place they need to be).

Search for the Helpers

This looks like a neat thought. One of many shiny sides of the pandemic is that it’s actually introduced out the American tendency to tinker:

New paper prototype of a DIY air purifying lamp!

Impressed by wood-veneer hanging lamps. Makes use of a Levoit 300s filter, two 140mms followers, heat white LED strip. Exterior body manufactured from embroidery hoops, paper, waxed canvas and wire, designed by @mbecica 1/ pic.twitter.com/e7wMbt8Vrs

— Kai Chang (@syntagmatic) February 23, 2023

The skeptic in me needs to know if it really works. Would earlier than and after CO2 measurements do the trick?

Covid Is Airborne

Air journey:

“Impact of Predeparture Testing on Postarrival SARS-CoV-2–Constructive Check Outcomes Amongst Worldwide Vacationers — CDC Traveler-Primarily based Genomic Surveillance Program, 4 U.S. Airports, March–September 2022” [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report]. “CDC’s Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance Program collects postarrival nasal swabs for SARS-CoV-2 testing from volunteering worldwide air vacationers. Amongst 3,049 pooled (28,056 particular person) samples collected throughout March 20–September 3, 2022, the predeparture testing requirement was related to 52% decrease postarrival SARS-CoV-2 positivity.”

“Notes from the Discipline: Plane Wastewater Surveillance for Early Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Variants — John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport, New York Metropolis, August–September 2022” [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report]. “As SARS-CoV-2 testing declines worldwide [note lack of agency], surveillance of worldwide vacationers for SARS-CoV-2 permits detection of rising variants and fills gaps in international genomic surveillance (1). As a result of SARS-CoV-2 could be detected in feces and urine of some contaminated individuals (2), wastewater surveillance in airports and on plane has been proposed by the worldwide public well being neighborhood† as a low-cost mechanism to observe SARS-CoV-2 variants coming into the USA. Sampling wastewater immediately from plane can be utilized to hyperlink SARS-CoV-2 lineage information with flight origin international locations with out energetic engagement of vacationers…. This investigation demonstrated the feasibility of plane wastewater surveillance as a low-resource method in contrast with particular person testing to observe SARS-CoV-2 variants with out direct traveler involvement or disruption to airport operations. Limitations embrace dependence on toilet use through the flight, which correlates with flight length (5); incapacity to tell apart vacationers with connecting flight itineraries, which lessens precision when ascertaining variant origin; and potential carryover of residual SARS-CoV-2 RNA between flights yielding viral detections unrelated to vacationers on the flight. Stringent genome protection thresholds would possibly cut back the probability of carryover variant identification on subsequent flights.”

Lambert right here: Each helpful research. And why the heck did we now have to attend three years right into a pandemic to get them finished? Why, it’s nearly just like the CDC is a store for writing papers, and never a public well being company in any respect!

* * *

“Elements to think about within the protected design of intensive care models – Half 1: historic elements and air flow programs” [Journal of Infection Prevention]. From the Summary: “Proof linking the position of air flow programs in transmission of an infection to sufferers in intensive care models has elevated lately…. The authors discovered various issues with air flow in ICU to which there has not been a cohesive response when it comes to steerage to help customers and designers. The resultant void permits new tasks to proceed with suboptimal and designs which place sufferers and employees in danger. The NHS is now initially of main new investments in healthcare amenities in England and this along with the tip of the antibiotic period mandates new steerage to handle these main issues.” • “The top of the antibiotic period” thrown in there as a lagniappe, yikes.

Maskstravaganza

Hospital An infection Management [sic] doing its factor:

1. Hospital go to as we speak surreal. They weren’t going to let me go to the affected person except I took off my N95 respirator and placed on a really flimsy surgical masks. I mentioned although I drove for an hour to visit- I might name down the corridor on my mobile phone somewhat than take off N95.

— Martha Younger- JD, MBA, N95 (@mryoung151) February 24, 2023

A helpful tactic:

3 Ask to talk to the attending doctor. I can solely assume that the nurses didn’t need to must bug the already overworked doc for this “ache within the ass customer” and let me in. Generally being a ache the ass would possibly save your life or the lifetime of others. I don’t blame the HCWs

— Martha Younger- JD, MBA, N95 (@mryoung151) February 24, 2023

And the ethical: Don’t be afraid to be a PITA. You would be serving to others!

Scientific Communication

“How Language Shapes Change: Views on the Most and Least Efficient Communication Methods and Ways In the course of the COVID‑19 Pandemic” [CanCovid]. From the Summary:

Going via what CDC has finished, for Q1: “Nope, nope, nope….” And for Q2: “Yep, yep, yep…” Hardly ever do you ever see a venture go fully fallacious. However CDC appears to have completed it. (I ought to look into CDC’s Walensky-led re-org, sooner or later. If any readers have leads, please depart in feedback.)

Elite Malfeasance

“Fixing U.S. public well being would require a health-systems revolution — and for physicians to take a backseat” [Eric Reinhart, STAT]. “By its stranglehold on sources and institutional energy, the U.S. medical occupation has additionally come to distort the very definition of public well being and what’s now broadly believed to represent related information. As I famous in a associated essay in The Nation, classes from labor historical past, social anthropology, political financial system, epidemiology, communication, legislation, and numerous different nonmedical fields symbolize the majority of the experience that’s most important to formulating efficient public well being coverage. Medical interventions represent simply 10% to twenty% of modifiable components that have an effect on well being, but slim biomedical experience has been persistently prioritized within the collection of U.S. public well being leaders from native to state and federal ranges. The marginalization of non-biomedical information inside public well being administration and the corresponding elevation of physicians to energy has had catastrophic penalties for population-level well being. Whereas the scientific frameworks that characterize medical coaching are acceptable for the one-to-one encounters of affected person care, misapplying them to the population-level issues of public well being results in a failure to successfully anticipate and tackle the social situations upon which illness and incapacity feed. This, in flip, fuels a high heavy, reactive nationwide well being coverage that prioritizes worthwhile medical remedy somewhat than cost- and life-saving prevention through community-based social providers. Declining life expectancy within the U.S. — now at its lowest in almost twenty years — displays the results of this coverage alternative. Rebuilding public well being within the U.S. would require reclaiming it from its biomedical perversions.”

Studying to dwell with cholera:

We won’t do ALL the water! For a whole metropolis? Are you kidding?

How are we going to pump it, eh? Gravity?

Even then, who’s going to pay for it? No one will put up with tax hikes!

Zero cholera is a pipe dream. Cease residing in worry. Take pleasure in your twenties. You will be lifeless quickly. pic.twitter.com/ZV4kc1b5xF

— Jonathan Mesiano-Crookston 🌬️🔅#COVIDisAirborne (@jmcrookston) February 22, 2023

“Herd Immunity,” the ever-receding horizon:

Began/going pic.twitter.com/esTica82qz

— JoHo (@19joho) February 23, 2023

Case Information

NOT UPDATED BioBot wastewater information from February 21:

For now, I’m going to make use of this nationwide wastewater information as the perfect proxy for case information (ignoring the scientific case information portion of this chart, which for my part “goes unhealthy” after March 2022, for causes as but unexplained). At the least we will spot traits, and examine present ranges to equal previous ranges.

Lambert right here: As soon as once more, what occurred on or earlier than March 16? I’ve marked the date on the chart, as a result of no less than one different individual has a solution:

I don’t assume there’s only one issue, although. Walensky’s scarlet letter comment was February 24, 2022 (which speaks to preserving the case price excessive, regardless of that the case depend is low).

Group Transmission

From Iowa Covid Tracker (not CDC):

Positivity

From the Walgreen’s check positivity tracker, revealed February 23:

-1.3%. Nonetheless excessive, however eventually a definite downturn.

Deaths

Demise price (Our World in Information):

Whole: 1,144,368 – 1,143,760 = 608 (608 * 365 = 221,920 deaths per yr, as we speak’s YouGenicist™ quantity for “residing with” Covid (fairly a bit larger than the minimizers would love, although they’ll speak themselves into something. If the YouGenicist™ metric retains chugging alongside like this, I could must determine that is what the powers-that-be think about “mission completed” for this specific tranche of demise and illness). Properly, the whole wasn’t 192 once more. Not that I really feel higher about it.

It’s good that for deaths I’ve a easy, each day chart that simply retains chugging alongside, not like every little thing else CDC and the White Home are screwing up or letting go darkish, good job. (Although CDC could also be jiggering the numbers quickly. Decrease, naturally.)

Healthcare

“Your mind might be controlling how sick you get — and the way you recuperate” [Nature]. “[Asya Rolls, a neuroimmunologist] is a part of a rising group of scientists who’re mapping out the mind’s management over the physique’s immune responses. There are a number of traces of communication between the nervous and the immune programs — from small native circuits in organs such because the pores and skin, to longer-range routes starting within the mind — with roles in a variety of ailments, from autoimmunity to most cancers…. Clinicians have identified concerning the impact of constructive considering on illness development for a very long time, [Fahed Hakim, a paediatrician and director of the Nazareth Hospital EMMS in Israel] says. However this proof has been largely anecdotal or correlational, so having the ability to determine a pathway via which such an impact happens — and manipulate it experimentally in animals — makes it rather more actual, he says…. It’s time that each researchers and clinicians take the hyperlink between psychology and physiology severely, says Rolls. ‘?’” • Hmm. Covid is neutropic, so….

Zeitgeist Watch

“What’s actually behind the wave of disappointment amongst teenage ladies? We requested 9 of them.” [NBC]. “Studies of persistent disappointment and hopelessness. Declines in total psychological well being. An increase in suicidal ideas…. [T]hese traits [were] outlined in an alarming Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention report about youngsters’ psychological well being final week…. The report, revealed Feb. 13, was the product of the CDC’s 2021 Youth Danger Habits Survey, a biennial effort to gather information about excessive schoolers’ health-related behaviors and experiences. The outcomes, based mostly on responses from greater than 17,000 college students, confirmed that well-being is particularly poor amongst teenage ladies, 57% of whom reported feeling ‘persistently unhappy or hopeless’ — a 10-year excessive.”

“Social Media is a Main Reason behind the Psychological Sickness Epidemic in Teen Women. Right here’s the Proof” [Jon Haidt, After Babel]. “I’m a social psychologist who’s at all times cautious of one-factor explanations for complicated social phenomena. In The Coddling of the American Thoughts, Greg Lukianoff and I confirmed that there have been six interwoven threads that produced the explosion of unwisdom that hit American universities in 2015, one among which was the rise of hysteria and despair in Gen Z (these born in and after 1996); a second was the huge overprotection of kids that started within the Nineties. Within the e book I’m now writing (Children In Area) I present that these two threads are each important for understanding why teen psychological well being collapsed within the 2010s. Briefly, it’s the transition from a play-based childhood involving quite a lot of dangerous unsupervised play, which is crucial for overcoming worry and fragility, to a phone-based childhood which blocks regular human improvement by taking time away from sleep, play, and in-person socializing, in addition to inflicting dependancy and drowning children in social comparisons they’ll’t win. So this isn’t a one-factor story, and in future posts I’ll present my analysis on play. However as we speak’s submit is about what I imagine to be the most important single issue and the one one that may clarify why the epidemic began so instantly, round 2012, in a number of international locations.” • That issue is certainly social media, and the remainder of the submit, which it’s best to learn in full, is dedicated to displaying why (Abstract: “social media as a significant trigger of minor despair is gendered and a results of Instagram”).

“From TV to TikTok, younger individuals are uncovered to playing promotions in every single place” [The Conversation]. “The 11- to 17-year-olds who took half in our research informed us they frequently come into contact with playing not simply throughout sports activities, however in a spread of on a regular basis environments. They noticed promotions for playing in native procuring centres, at submit workplaces, throughout sporting matches, films and tv exhibits. They have been additionally conscious of a spread of novel merchandise and advertising and marketing methods the playing trade is utilizing to succeed in the following era of consumers. This fixed publicity created a notion playing was ‘at all times there in your face’ and ‘a pure factor to do.’ This was notably the case when it was positioned alongside non-gambling actions in on a regular basis settings.”

Guillotine Watch

“Elizabeth Koch Is aware of What You’re Considering” [New York Times]. “[W]e settled right into a convention room. I anticipated her to be guarded, consistent with her father’s method to the information media. As an alternative, she spoke excitedly for almost two hours — telling me about her circuitous path to center age, salting her sentences with profanity and referring to herself as a ‘privileged, pasty, white woman from the Midwest.’ She talked about exploring ‘ache holes’ with a therapist and occurring two-week silent retreats. She insisted that she was ‘apolitical.’ Largely, Ms. Koch wished to elucidate one thing known as the Notion Field, a time period she trademarked in 2021. Unlikely Collaborators is constructed across the idea, which Ms. Koch needs to make use of to immediate a worldwide motion of self-investigation. ‘All of us dwell inside an invisible however ever-present psychological field — a Notion Field,’ Ms. Koch started. ‘This field distorts our perceptions of every little thing and everybody round us. It distorts our means to grasp different folks, to see them clearly, to attach with them. And it distorts our means to essentially even know ourselves.’”• My notion is that billionaires lie on a regular basis. I want they’d cease:

Class Warfare

East Palestine:

Sirota neglected a class: The left. The left checks first with the employees. Anyone who did that — NC, however not Lever Information — would have discovered that staff fingered a “scorching field” as the reason for the derailement; a principle of the case simply confirmed by the NTSB. The left additionally finds out the a poorly “blocked” practice is a doable intensifier, as heavy, sloshing tank vehicles on the finish of the practice might have precipitated a whiplash impact. The left additionally connects these two causes to the enormously worthwhile Precision Scheduled Railroading, which cuts staff and makes for longer and extra harmful trains. There isn’t a proof that has appeared to this point that will point out that brake laws had any causal or mitigating impact on the derailment in any respect (and braking regulation advocates should additionally present that the upper tech brakes they advocate would overcome poor “blocking”).

So why have liberals gone fallacious on this specific means? Specializing in the non-issue of “laws” permits liberals to (1) blame Trump (a doable fundraising alternative), (2) ignore Precision Scheduled Railroading (and therefore not confront capital immediately), and (3) erase staff and their unions (who they only kicked within the stones by outlawing a strike). I do know I’m a damaged file on this, however the Lever Information protection on this has been actually annoying; they instantly pulled the “regulation” framing out of their ***** — from whence it propagated in every single place else — with out doing even cursory investigation with the precise consultants within the discipline: railroad staff. Not a superb look.

“The Response Financial system” [London Review of Books]. “Our public sphere is ceaselessly dominated by occasions you could possibly name ‘response chains’, whereby reactions provoke reactions, which provoke additional reactions, and so forth. Final yr’s Oscars ceremony is remembered for simply such a response chain. When the host, the comic Chris Rock, made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, her husband, Will Smith, strode up on stage and slapped Rock within the face on dwell tv. For a number of days afterwards, numerous commentators, celebrities and social media customers sought to tell apart themselves by their response to ‘the slap’. Inevitably, these reactions provoked additional reactions…. Thanks largely to the unfold of good scrollable gadgets within the final fifteen years, a sure idea of public participation – what’s now identified within the managerial vernacular as ‘engagement’ – is widespread to occasions of this type, and to the best way they’re framed by the media.” That is the dopamine loop on the stage of social relations. Extra: “The person isn’t conceived in the identical means as within the liberal philosophical custom – as an autonomous agent, possessed of cause and pursuits – or within the psychoanalytic custom, as formed maybe unconsciously by previous conflicts and accidents. As an alternative, every of us (celebrities included) turns into a junction field in an unlimited, complicated community, receiving, processing and emitting data in a semi-automatic vogue, and in actual time. Data and feelings bounce between these junctions, mutating as they journey, as instantiated within the memes and jokes that unfold virally through social media platforms. On this mannequin, every particular person response is another merchandise of data thrown again into the community, looking for counter-reactions…. [M]uch of the anxiousness provoked by as we speak’s response financial system consists within the chance that, in our determined hunt for suggestions and our want to present suggestions to others, we permit ourselves to be steered in instructions we didn’t consent to, and should not want to go. This has echoes of the mid-Twentieth-century fears of promoting, PR and propaganda, with the distinction that now, within the age of response chains, we’re drawn in direction of controversy, absurd public spectacles, endlessly mutating memes, trolling and so on. In these showers of suggestions, a lot of the attraction is within the sheer amount of response being circulated. Suggestions mechanisms, which the cyberneticians seen as devices to realize autonomy and facilitate navigation, turn into a entice.” • This isn’t response within the sense of responseary. Or is it? (Not too long ago, I used to be looking for a phrase for when a regime, as an alternative of changing into an ancien regime, efficiently reconsolidates itself. Maybe “response” is a candidate for that; I ought to dig out my Cory Robin. Whereas I’ve rejected a left/proper binary, in favor of a conservative/liberal/left triangle, maybe I must make a transfer into “fourthness”: reactionary/conservative/liberal/left. Actually the power on “the correct” isn’t from Reagan conservatives, however from, nicely, reactionaries. OTOH, I shouldn’t confuse the perform of response with the ideology or factionalism of response; Obama, for instance, reconsolidated our FIRE-dominated financial system after the Nice Crash, and he was a liberal. Additional thought wanted….)

Not that I’m foily:

And:

As reader eg wrote: “You’ll be able to have no matter you want, but it surely’s all smothered in Bernays sauce.”

“Google asks some staff to share desks amid workplace downsizing” [CNBC]. “‘Most Googlers will now share a desk with one different Googler,’ the inner doc said, noting they count on staff to come back in on alternate days in order that they’re not on the identical desk on the identical day. ‘By the matching course of, they may agree on a primary desk setup and set up norms with their desk associate and groups to make sure a constructive expertise within the new shared surroundings.’”

Information of the Wired

“How Stovemakers Helped Invent Fashionable Advertising” [JSTOR Daily]. “[W]ith the daybreak of the stove-specific foundry and a dramatic enchancment in transportation starting within the 1830s, producers took duty for his or her merchandise. Now not in a position to depend on native markets alone, these range innovators tried to tell apart particular person manufacturers. They patented new options and created mannequin names—a number of them. [Historian Howell J. Harris] notes {that a} staggering four-fifths of all design patents within the 1840s, and two-thirds of these issued within the 1850s, needed to do with stoves and their options. The mass manufacturing of stoves made for extra similarity throughout markets, although Harris factors out that put further stress on smaller options like useful design improvements and add-ons supposed to make stoves stand out. Stoves weren’t simply stoves any extra: they have been Jewett Stoves, St. Lous Air-Tights, Franklin Saddlebags. These metallic behemoths made their strategy to main cities by rail and ship, then to ‘range districts’ and shops. In non-urban areas, retailers bought merchandise from cities and managed the delivery course of. Many of those retailers have been tinware peddlers turned tinware retailer house owners with huge distribution networks and gross sales territories. They cleaned up travel-worn stoves, put in, and even repaired them whereas overseeing complicated credit score and barter programs. Touring salesmen dubbed ‘range drummers’ crisscrossed the nation, promoting stoves and accumulating on money owed. ‘They traveled mild, carrying commerce gossip, catalogs, and never a lot else, visiting retailers in their very own premises,’ Harris writes. These salespeople additionally supplied customer support and rudimentary market intelligence, reporting again to headquarters on how customers just like the stoves and what the opponents have been promoting. The range growth ended within the late nineteenth century, however by then the die had been forged. At the same time as range costs fell, Harris writes, stovemakers achieved ‘common market penetration…reworking stoves into objects purchased as consumption gadgets, on grounds of their type, and even magnificence, in addition to their useful utility.’” • Ha. My household went via a whole circle again to generics: An enormous metal field, extraordinarily not lovely. I can’t even keep in mind the model!

“Some Writing Recommendation” [Ross Barkan]. That is very helpful for anyone who needs to “be a author.” I like this tip particularly: “You actually need to be a author? Purchase a printer. For those who’ve written one thing you want, learn it as soon as over within the Phrase doc or Google doc. Then print it out. You’ll be shocked by what number of errors you’ll catch studying it a second time on paper. That’s how the attention works. Learn with a pen and mark it up. Learn it out loud to see if it flows. With fiction particularly, it is a should.”

Contact data for crops: Readers, be at liberty to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) learn how to ship me a examine in case you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to learn how to ship me photos of crops. Greens are superb! Fungi and coral are deemed to be honorary crops! In order for you your deal with to seem as a credit score, please place it initially of your mail in parentheses: (thus). In any other case, I’ll anonymize by utilizing your initials. See the earlier Water Cooler (with plant) right here. From Late Introvert:

Late Introvert writes: “Historical ferns, as we now have been informed by an area botanist. We don’t know the title.” I don’t know what the ferns to proper and left are, however that positive appears to be like like a fiddlehead within the center. Readers?

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not coated by the annual NC fundraiser. So when you see a hyperlink you particularly like, or an merchandise you wouldn’t see wherever else, please don’t hesitate to specific your appreciation in tangible kind. Keep in mind, a tip jar is for tipping! Common constructive suggestions each makes me really feel good and lets me know I’m heading in the right direction with protection. After I get no donations for 5 or ten days I get anxious. Extra tangibly, a relentless trickle of donations helps me with bills, and I consider that trickle when setting fundraising targets: