By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Reader Question: Periodically we’ve posted threads of suggestions for distributors (docs, dentists, eating places, retail, gyms, efficiency venues) which might be what I would name “airborne aware,” that’s, having correct air flow (HEPA, CO2 meter, perhaps Far UV), and masking. Am I proper in considering that there’s no central repository for such distributors? Very sometimes I see a web site float by, however nothing actually appears to click on. Thanks! –lambert P.S. There’s actually nothing on Google Maps, within the sense that this data is a traditional subject like tackle and cellphone, which might certainly be very useful, although maybe somebody has constructed a Google map that does this.

Fowl Tune of the Day

Amazonian Grosbeak, ENE of Careiro do Castanho, Fazenda Toshiba. “Songs by a chook that was first heard calling, then singing, from very dense development on the fringe of tall terra firme forest alongside the street simply past the second dip; the singing chook was about 6-8 meters away and 1-2 meters up when recorded; subsequent playback resulted within the chook approaching and giving calls; it was seen and clearly a male of this species, however a second chook was additionally heard calling; partly cloudy, gentle breeze from the east, and within the higher 80s to low 90s.”

Politics

“However what’s authorities itself, however the best 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 most of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in truth a rational administration of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

2024

“Biden talks financial system, China, political division in unique interview with Judy Woodruff” [PBS]. On his poor polling, Biden: “As a result of the polls don’t matter anymore. You bought to make, what, 40, 50 calls and on a mobile phone to get somebody to reply a ballot? Even the pollsters, you speak to them. Ask them what they consider this. Look.” • I don’t assume he’s fallacious.

Republican Funhouse

“James O’Keefe Is on Paid Depart From Undertaking Veritas” [New York Magazine]. “O’Keefe is his group’s guiding ideological power and onscreen face, however his standing as its day-to-day supervisor has grow to be unsure amid reviews of inner turmoil, lawsuits from former staff, leaks about its inner workings, and a federal investigation into its conduct in buying a diary stolen from Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter. [Executive Director Daniel] Strack’s inner message to staff made reference to what he known as ‘a distracting time’ and mentioned {that a} board assembly had been held to debate ‘the well being of the group’ and that whereas ‘we’ve got not provide you with closing options but we’ve got made a number of fast selections.’ The message mentioned two high Undertaking Veritas executives, together with the nonprofit’s chief monetary officer, had been ‘reinstated.’ A number of sources mentioned that the pair had lately been fired by O’Keefe.” • Blue sky-ing right here, completely, however one would possibly surprise if Pfizer sponsored the hit?

Democrats en Déshabillé

Affected person readers, evidently persons 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 “stay” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It seems that defining the Democrat Occasion is, in truth, a tough drawback. I do assume the paragraph that follows is on level all the way in which 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,” after all.) Second, all of the working elements of the Occasion reinforce one another. Depart apart characterizing the relationships between components of the Occasion (ka-ching, however not solely) these components comprise a community — a Flex Web? An iron octagon? — of funders, distributors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with belongings within the press and the intelligence group.

Observe, after all, 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.

* * *

“Biden Goals to Win Again White Working-Class Voters By Their Wallets” [New York Times]. Fascinatingly, the primary Wayback Machine headline is “Biden Breaks Floor on a Large Undertaking: Successful Again the White Working Class.” Not the identical. “Together with his name for a “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America,” President Biden on Tuesday evening acknowledged rhetorically what Democrats have been getting ready for 2 years: a fierce marketing campaign to win again white working-class voters by the creation of a whole bunch of hundreds of well-paid jobs that don’t require a school diploma… a lot of that path was already laid by the final Congress with the signing of a $1 trillion infrastructure invoice, a $280 billion measure to rekindle a home semiconductor business and the Inflation Discount Act, which included $370 billion for low-emission vitality to fight local weather change. Whether or not or not Mr. Biden can persuade a divided Congress to behave on his remaining plans, the cash from these legal guidelines has simply begun to circulate, and a surge of hiring is coming. A lot of these jobs will probably be within the industrial battlegrounds that Democrats both took again from Mr. Trump in 2020 or will want in 2024, when endangered senators like Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin face re-election. However Democrats should match these jobs towards Republican appeals aimed toward white grievances.” • It actually is a novel challenge: Change the category composition of the nation to your electoral base. We’ll see the way it goes. $1.65 trillion, taking all of the packages collectively, actually isn’t very a lot when unfold out over a decade.

“James Carville Assaults GOP, Marjorie Taylor Greene As ‘White Trash’” [HuffPo]. “Democratic political advisor James Carville on Wednesday described Republican lawmakers who heckled President Joe Biden throughout his State of the Union speech as ‘white trash.’ ‘I inform individuals I’ve the equal of a PhD in white trashology, and we noticed actual white trash on show,’ Carville advised MSNBC anchor Ari Melber.” • Hmm.

#COVID19

Lambert right here: I’m however a humble tapewatcher, however not like Eric Topol, I’m not calling a surge, as a result of the final peak was Biden’s Omicron debacle, and after an Everest like that, what’s left? Topol’s view is the institution view: Hospital-centric. Mine is infection-centric. I don’t see the common acceleration or doubling in circumstances that I might count on to see primarily based on previous surges.

I’m calling a “One thing Terrible.” It’s gonna be dangerous, in some new method, and we don’t understand how, but (however see right here for immune system dysregulation, which is wanting fairly terrible).

Lambert right here: Seems to be like “leveling off to a excessive plateau” throughout the board. Keep protected on the market!

“CR Field Directions” (PDF) [Google Drive]. English-, French-, German-language CR Field Directions for obtain. The UK has an otherworldly electrical system, so right here is theirs:

• Mastravaganza: “We Nonetheless Don’t Know What Works Greatest to Gradual the Unfold Of COVID-19” [Time]. Assuming that’s the objective of the Biden administration, which it isn’t. Mass an infection with out mitigation is the objective. That mentioned: “Due to a scarcity of analysis on NPIs, we nonetheless can’t reply essential questions like: which authorities measures had the best and the least affect? How did the sequencing and timing of those NPIs have an effect on their effectiveness? Which measures prompted extra hurt than profit? We want solutions to those questions so we are able to put together for the following pandemic, armed with higher information.” • How odd such data was by no means collected. Nicely, I assume we’ll by no means know. On masks:

With all NPIs, if you begin digging into the analysis proof, the image isn’t at all times clear reduce. Take masks. From a primary science perspective, masks work—they filter the particles that we breathe. Excessive filtration masks, like N95s, work higher than surgical or material masks. Masking gives fairly a little bit of safety for the individuals carrying them towards respiratory ailments, and may assist scale back transmission from an contaminated individual to others.

In idea, then, if each individual on the planet had worn a high-quality masks 24/7 for a number of weeks the COVID-19 pandemic would have been, if not over, then at the very least considerably slowed. However in follow, the intervention that we applied was not some good excellent of mask-wearing, through which everybody constantly wore a well-fitting N95 in each state of affairs. Throughout surges, not everybody masked indoors, not everybody wore N95s, and people who did put on a masks might have worn them imperfectly (we’ve all seen individuals carrying masks with their noses uncovered, and even with their masks hanging round their necks).

I believe the image is sort of “clear reduce.” “We” ran an enormous social experiment — very similar to we’ve completed with vax — to see if we are able to degrade the fundamental physics of masks to a degree of non-performance by having WHO and CDC initially discourage their use, then periodically and randomly shifting coverage, by no means offering easy directions for buy or use, not having public figures mannequin them, permitting a continuing drumbeat of business-friendly punditry to discourage them, and ulimately by shaming and mocking mask-wearers. The experiment, clearly, was an enormous success, and a template for future mitigations for local weather change. After all, we may merely have mailed them out to each American citizen, together with check kits, however that will be far too easy.

• Maskstravaganza: “How Liberals Killed Masking (Unlocked)” (podcast) [Death Panel]. “We glance again at how such a primary intervention as masking throughout a pandemic grew to become more and more scrutinized, undermined, and finally stigmatized in mainstream discourse over the past three years.” • Good, however lengthy and complicated. It happens to me that we’ve had two different lengthy deliverables currently: The primary being Jeff Gerth’s four-part demolition of RussiaGate within the Columbia Journalism Evaluate; the second being Hersh’s 5000-word Nord Stream story. These two tales, and Dying Panel’s podcast are all works of up to date historical past; there appears to be a requirement for a “usable previous,” one at the very least not dominated by bullshit. These three items — certainly not CT — are all, in their very own method, examples of how you can analyze a SCAD (“State Crime In opposition to Democracy”), although the State has a special position to play in every sequence of occasions.

• Maskstravaganza:

At the very least Maddow may have talked about the one masker was Sanders.

• “FDA nixes EUA ambitions for Eiger’s COVID therapy, proposes full approval pathway as an alternative” [Fierce Pharma]. “In March, Eiger reported that peginterferon lambda diminished the danger of ER visits longer than six hours by 50% in comparison with placebo. A complete of 84% of handled sufferers have been at the very least partially vaccinated and the corporate mentioned that the therapy was additionally discovered to be efficient towards the Omicron variant. Regardless, Eiger says the FDA relayed that an EUA was unlikely to be granted within the ‘present context of the pandemic.’ As an alternative, the company steered the corporate take into account an extra pivotal trial so it may take the complete approval route, unlikely to be essentially the most tantalizing choice given the price of a brand new trial. The corporate mentioned that because of this, it’s contemplating all choices for peginterferon lambda, together with emergency authorization outdoors of the U.S. and ‘strategic choices for continued growth’ of the remedy. ‘ • What the hell does the “present context of the pandemic” imply?

• Hospital An infection Management at it once more:

• Ouch:

A toned-down model of the “birds aren’t actual” CT, maybe.

Case Information

NOT UPDATED BioBot wastewater knowledge from February 6:

For now, I’m going to make use of this nationwide wastewater knowledge as the very best proxy for case knowledge (ignoring the medical case knowledge portion of this chart, which in my opinion “goes dangerous” after March 2022, for causes as but unexplained). At the very least we are able to spot traits, and examine present ranges to equal previous ranges.

• “Is wastewater the reply for monitoring all illness outbreaks?” [Jeremy Faust, Inside Medicine]. “The issue is {that a} neat correlation between detected ranges of SARS-CoV-2 RNA and case counts has not been exactly labored out. Even when a great correlation might be labored out, the ratios might change with new variants and different components. Nonetheless, qualitatively, it’s fairly clear that when SARS-CoV-2 wastewater ranges go up, reported Covid-19 case counts observe go well with. That information has been highly effective. The CDC now has a nationwide wastewater surveillance system on-line that anybody can browse.” • Yeah CDC has such a web site, and customers can certainly browse it. When it’s up. Or when the information from the therapy plant in your space isn’t greyed out. Or in the event you don’t stay within the South, which is hardly collaborating in this system in any respect. Given CDC’s efficiency for the whole lot else within the pandemic, I wouldn’t be shocked in the event that they put some nimrod in cost, to sabotage this system with dangerous administration.

Transmission

Right here is CDC’s interactive map by county set to group transmission (the “crimson map,” which is the map CDC desires solely hospitals to have a look at, not you.) The map is claimed to replace Monday-Friday by 8 pm:

The earlier map:

NOTE: I shall most actually not be utilizing the CDC’s new “Neighborhood Degree” metric. As a result of CDC has mixed a number one indicator (circumstances) with a lagging one (hospitalization) their new metric is a poor warning signal of a surge, and a poor approach to assess private threat. As well as, Covid is a illness you don’t wish to get. Even in case you are not hospitalized, you’ll be able to endure from Lengthy Covid, vascular points, and neurological points. That the “inexperienced map” (which Topol calls a “capitulation” and a “deception”) continues to be up and being taken critically verges on the legal.

Positivity

From the Walgreen’s check positivity tracker, printed February 9:

-0.6%. Nonetheless on the excessive plateau, equal to earlier peaks.

• “Nearly 1,000 individuals wait as much as 13 hours for COVID-19 testing in Maryvale” [Arizona Central]. • Over, completely over.

Wastewater

SITE DOWN Wastewater knowledge (CDC), February 4:

Much less gray, although nonetheless an excessive amount of; lots much less crimson.

February 3:

NOT UPDATED And MWRA knowledge, February 4:

Minor uptick, north and south.

Variants

Lambert right here: It’s past irritating how gradual the variant knowledge is. Does no one within the public well being institution get a promotion for monitoring variants? Are there no grants? Is there a single lab that does this work, and everyone will get the outcomes from them? [grinds teeth, bangs head on desk]. UPDATE Sure. See NC right here on Pango. Each Friday, a stately, educational tempo totally incompatible with defending your self towards a variant exhibiting doubling habits.

Variant knowledge, nationwide (Walgreens), January 30:

Lambert right here: XBB overtakes BQ. CH down, reassuring, as a result of a Tweet in Hyperlinks, January 11 from GM drew consideration to it (“shows such a excessive relative development benefit”) and in Water Cooler, January 18, from Nature: “CH.1.1 and CA.3.1 variants have been extremely immune to each monovalent and bivalent mRNA vaccinations.”

Lambert right here: Wierdly, the display screen shot about has been changed at the moment by knowledge from “10/7/2022.” (It’s clearly not present knowledge; BQ.1* and XBB don’t dominate.

NOT UPDATED Variant knowledge, nationwide (CDC), January 14 (Weighted Estimates Solely*):

BQ.1* takes first place. XBB developing quick. (For BQ.1/XBB and vaccine escape, see right here.) CH.* now seems, per week after Walgreens. Right here is Area 2, the Northeast:

CH.1* seems, however barely under the nationwide common. XBB totally dominates, making clear that Area 2 (New England) varies enormously from the nationwide common.

Listed below are all of the areas, in a collection of uncaptioned, legend-free and complicated pie charts:

It virtually seems like, with respect to variants at the very least, there a number of pandemics, not one. The Northeast, the place XBB (blue) dominates, and the opposite areas, with totally different proportions of different variants, however XBB not dominating. Odd. (Sure, I do know the colours are the identical as on the bar chart above. Nonetheless, there are two charts, one bar, one pie, and on a laptop computer one can not see each at similar time. Simply one other instance of CDC blithering on the degree of the smallest element.)

NOTE * CDC used to have a “Nowcast Off” radio button, which I used due to my dangerous expertise with CDC fashions like Nowcast. CDC explains (I believe) the change within the following be aware:

Weighted estimates (supplied for all weeks besides the latest three weeks) are variant proportions which might be primarily based on empirical (noticed) genomic sequencing knowledge. These estimates are usually not out there for the latest weeks due to the time it takes to generate the unweighted knowledge, together with pattern assortment, specimen therapy, transport, evaluation, and add into public databases.

Sublineages with weighted estimates lower than 1% of all circulating variants are mixed with their dad or mum lineage. When the weighted estimate of a sublineage crosses the 1% threshold and has substitutions within the spike protein that might have an effect on vaccine efficacy, transmission, or severity, it could be separated from its dad or mum lineage and displayed by itself within the variant proportions knowledge.

Nowcast estimates (supplied for the latest three weeks when the “Nowcast on” choice is chosen under) are model-based projections of variant proportions for the latest weeks to allow well timed public well being motion. CDC makes use of the Nowcast to forecast variant proportions earlier than the weighted estimates can be found for a given week.

Somebody who can interpret The Nice Runes can have a look at this; however I don’t have time at the moment.

As a test, since New York is a BQ.1* hotbed, New York hospitalization, up to date February 8:

Hospitalization knowledge for Queens, up to date February 5:

Deaths

Dying fee (Our World in Information):

Whole: 1,137,929 – 1,136,960 = 969 (969 * 365 = 353,685 deaths per 12 months, at the moment’s YouGenicist™ quantity for “dwelling with” Covid (fairly a bit increased than the minimizers would love, although they’ll speak themselves into something. If the YouGenicist™ metric retains chugging alongside like this, I could must resolve that is what the powers-that-be take into account “mission completed” for this explicit tranche of loss of life and illness).

It’s good that for deaths I’ve a easy, every day chart that simply retains chugging alongside, not like the whole lot 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.)

Stats Watch

Employment State of affairs: “United States Preliminary Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The variety of Individuals submitting for unemployment advantages rose to 196 thousand within the week ending February 4th, from the earlier week’s nine-month low of 183 thousand and above market expectations of 190 thousand. Nonetheless, the most recent determine steered the labor market remained tight, which may contribute additional to inflationary strain on the planet’s largest financial system.”

The Bezzle: “‘Sam? Are you there?!’ The weird and brutal closing hours of FTX” [Financial Times]. Wild, wild stuff; I might think about any person’s pitching it in Hollywood proper now. “‘No person had gone by a catastrophe earlier than, so individuals have been breaking psychologically,’ mentioned somebody near them. ‘It was by no means extra obvious to me how younger all of them have been than within the 72-hour interval earlier than chapter.’”

The Bezzle: AI = BS:

The Bezzle: AI = BS:

The Bezzle: “Large Tech and Generative AI” [Tanay Jaipuria, Tanay’s Newsletter]. Creator is a VC. “At the moment, I’ll talk about what the large tech firms – Google, Fb, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple – needed to say about their plans for Generative AI of their most up-to-date earnings name final week.” Particularly, Google: “[CEO Pichai] additionally hinted that their strongest language fashions will come to look in some experimental codecs. Language fashions like BERT and MUM have , enabling important rating enhancements and multimodal search like Google Lens. Very quickly, individuals will be capable to work together instantly with our latest, strongest language fashions as a companion to Search in experimental and modern methods. Keep tuned.” • Most would agree that over the past 4 years Google Search outcomes have gone proper down the crapper. Thanks, AI!

The Bezzle: “Google confirms AI-generated content material isn’t towards Search pointers” [9to5 Google]. “In a brand new submit to the Google Search Central weblog, Google clarifies its stance on AI-generated content material and the way Search treats that content material. The quick model is that Google Search pointers don’t instantly ban AI-generated content material. Reasonably, Google will reward ‘high-quality content material, nevertheless it’s produced.’ The corporate defines ‘high-quality content material’ primarily based on ‘experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness,’ or ‘E-E-A-T.’” Which explains why NC will get no Google hits, I suppose. Extra: “Whereas Google gained’t penalize AI-generated content material instantly, it does say that utilizing AI to create content material that carries the ‘main goal of manipulating rating in search outcomes’ continues to be a violation of coverage, however that not all use of automation is taken into account spam.” • Swell. Let the video games start. (Does make you surprise if Google plans to auto-generate mountains of AI-generated crap by itself, then search that, in a type of closed loop. Actually easier and cheaper than crawling a bunch of silly web sites.

At the moment’s Worry & Greed Index: 74 Greed (earlier shut: 74 Greed) [CNN]. One week in the past: 79 (Excessive Greed). (0 is Excessive Worry; 100 is Excessive Greed). Final up to date Feb 9 at 1:41 PM EST.

Our Famously Free Press

Day One of many Hersh Watch:

Nothing from state media as of this writing:

“Why Substack?” [Seymour Hersh, Substack]. “Right here, I’ve the type of freedom I’ve at all times fought for. I’ve watched author after author on this platform as they’ve freed themselves from their publishers’ financial pursuits, run deep with tales with out worry of phrase counts or column inches, and—most significantly—spoken on to their readers. And that final level, for me, is the clincher. I’ve by no means been concerned about socializing with pols or cozying as much as cash varieties on the self-important cocktail get togethers—the star-fucking events, I at all times appreciated to name them. I’m at my greatest after I swig low cost bourbon with the servicemen, work over the first-year legislation agency associates for intel, or swap tales with the junior minister from a rustic most individuals can’t identify. That’s at all times been my model. And because it seems, it’s the ethos of this on-line group as properly. What you’ll discover right here is, I hope, a mirrored image of that freedom. The story you’ll learn at the moment is the reality as I labored for 3 months to seek out, with no strain from a writer, editors or friends to make it hew to sure traces of thought—or pare it again to assuage their fears. Substack merely means reporting is again . . . unfiltered and unprogrammed—simply the way in which I prefer it.” • OK, however now let’s have a second supply.

Class Warfare

“Extra Than 400 Writers Guild Members Name on MSNBC to Attain ‘Honest Contract’ With Union” [Hollywood Reporter]. “The Writers Guild of America East is placing some extra strain on MSNBC to expedite contract negotiations. Greater than 400 members of the union — together with star members Tina Fey, Lilly Wachowski and David Simon — are calling on the cable information model to agree ‘to a good contract that features the pay and protections [MSNBC union members] deserve’ in a petition launched on Wednesday. The WGA East’s bargaining unit at MSNBC, a bunch of greater than 300 writers, producers, fact-checkers and others, has been negotiating with MSNBC and NBCUniversal administration for over a 12 months on their first contract because the union’s certification through a Nationwide Labor Relations Board election in August 2021.”

“The Large MOOP at Burning Man” [New York Magazine]. MOOP = “Matter Out of Place.” Fascinating description of Burning Man: “MOOP of a special type threatens the playa: a proposed geothermal exploration challenge about ten miles from the dry lake mattress the place tens of hundreds of techno-utopianists and Silicon Valley executives in booty shorts collect every summer season…. The competition started in 1986 with a small crowd watching as an eight-foot effigy (the “man” of Burning Man) was set ablaze on a San Francisco seashore; at the moment it’s a cultural establishment not not like Disney, if Disney Adults have been into moral non-monogamy and psilocybin. There are offshoot Burning Man festivals in Africa and Asia, regional “management summits” for Burners, a journal through which attendees ruminate on the competition’s “diaspora” and an enormous financial system of RV distributors and private-jet charters expressly affiliated with the Nevada occasion. In Black Rock Metropolis, no cash exchanges fingers and the tenets of radical self-reliance and decommodification reign supreme. A “gifting financial system” encourages individuals to convey provides — sunscreen, egg sandwiches, again rubs — that are introduced to and traded amongst revelers. However Burning Man the group, which has expanded to grow to be a de facto supervisor of the area as a lot because the producer of a yearly eight-day rave, exerts important money funding and political muscle to additional its pursuits.”

“How To Be A Scab” 101:

Information of the Wired

“I, too, have flown a large balloon over North Carolina” [North Carolina Rabbit Hole]. “At the moment, stratospheric balloon flights are an extremely frequent factor. Meteorologists world wide launch them twice a day from some 900 areas to make exact climate observations and forecasts. Detailed data on wind patterns make it doable to know the place balloons will find yourself. Even so, flights can simply go awry. The Chinese language authorities’s official excuse for his or her balloon’s walkabout over america was straight out of the Diplomatic Mission to Alderaan Playbook. China said that its ‘analysis’ balloon had merely had drifted into this nation’s airspace by mistake—a mistake that’s apparently occurred a number of occasions earlier than. Even when this appears ludicrous, it’s doable. I do know this. As a result of almost a decade in the past, I too misplaced a stratospheric balloon over North Carolina.”

Contact data for crops: Readers, be happy to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) learn the way to ship me a test in case you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to learn the way to ship me photos of crops. Greens are positive! 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 at first 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 RM:

RM writes: “Ice fog final evening at 8 above this morning.” Now we have seen this tree earlier than, however that is beautiful shot. I typically return to the identical web site over and over.

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not lined by the annual NC fundraiser. So in the event you see a hyperlink you particularly like, or an merchandise you wouldn’t see anyplace else, please don’t hesitate to precise your appreciation in tangible kind. Bear in mind, a tip jar is for tipping! Common optimistic 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 fearful. Extra tangibly, a continuing trickle of donations helps me with bills, and I consider that trickle when setting fundraising targets: