By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Affected person readers, varied types of administrivia saved interrupting my preparations for Water Cooler, so it is a bit scattered. –lambert
Chicken Tune of the Day
American Goldfinch, Spherical Valley Recreation Space, Hunterdon, New Jersey, United States.
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In Case You Would possibly Miss…
(1) Shanahan on the border.
(2) H5N1 testing wants enchancment.
(3) Warrantless surveillance FTW.
(4) FDR’s hearth chats.
Politics
“So lots of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are the truth is a rational administration of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
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2024
Lower than a yr to go!
RCP Ballot Averages, April 5
★ Right here this Friday’s RCP ballot. Trump remains to be up in all of the Swing States (extra right here), main with one exception: PA. I’ve highlighted it once more, (1) as a result of BIden is now up there, and (2) it’s an outlier, has been for weeks. Why isn’t Trump doing properly there? (I’ll work out a greater manner to do that, however for now: Blue dot = transfer towards Biden; pink dot = transfer towards Trump. No dot = no change (presumably as a result of state polls aren’t that quite a few so removed from election day).
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Trump (R): “America is bored of Trump. He received’t win the election” [Isaac Schorr, The Telegraph]. ” Trump could have a bonus on substance, however it’s a certainty that he lacks the self-discipline essential to capitalise absolutely on that benefit and fairly doable that he’s missing sufficient in that division to blow it solely. Worst of all for the presumptive Republican nominee, he isn’t some new determine voters can mission their hopes onto whereas hand-waving away the lunacy. His antics are now not a bizarrely refreshing style of one thing new, they’ve turn into part of America’s stale political tradition.” • I dunno. Trump can learn a room and he’s extremely adaptive. I say extra Chick-Fil-A visits! (The East Palestine go to, allow us to bear in mind, was not simply good media, it signaled a turnaround. So what you’ll about Trump’s marketing campaign staff in 2016, he was on the market, assembly individuals, training his riffs, doing his A/B testing. If Trump’s present skilled staff isn’t scheduling that type of factor for him, it ought to.)
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Kennedy (I): Shanahan visits the border (i.e., one of many objects in Harris’s portfolio):
Final week, I used to be down in Yuma on the Arizona-Mexico Border. In 2021, beneath 94 government orders, our authorities has enabled the migration of an estimated 10M to cross our borders with out papers.
With no steerage from the federal authorities, the border cities have been (and nonetheless are)… pic.twitter.com/dVbxWORtKJ
— Nicole Shanahan (@NicoleShanahan) April 12, 2024
She’s not sporting Nina McLemor. Alternatively, she’s not sporting Nina McLemor.
Kennedy (I):
“Election spoiler? How President Biden’s allies hope to cease Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” [USA Today]. “Kennedy’s present double-digit standing is greater than sufficient to swing outcomes in battleground states…. ‘If I have been a Democrat, I’d vote for RFK Jr. each single time over Biden as a result of he’s frankly extra in step with Democrats,’ Trump stated in a video launched by his marketing campaign Thursday. ‘I do imagine that RFK Jr. will do very properly, and I do imagine he’s going to take a number of votes away from crooked Joe Biden.’” • Hmm.
Kennedy (I): Hotez throws down the gauntlet:
1/n Each RFK Jr and Nicole Shanahan are flawed. Within the e-book about my daughter I element the proof displaying vaccines don’t trigger autism and the way autism begins in early fetal mind improvement manner earlier than youngsters obtain their first vaccine. pic.twitter.com/kg8I80QIZO
— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) April 4, 2024
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Spook Nation
“A Terrorist Warning From the FBI” [Wall Street Journal]. • What a shock.
“Home lastly passes surveillance invoice after three stumbles” [Politico]. “One other dramatic flip got here simply forward of the invoice’s last passage, with a proposal to require warrants when looking international knowledge collected by the surveillance program for data associated to People failed on 212-212 tie. The Biden administration and members of the Intelligence Committee waged an intense lobbying effort forward of the vote; Legal professional Normal Merrick Garland was calling members on Friday to induce their assist, in accordance with an individual accustomed to the conversations who was granted anonymity to talk candidly.” At all times good to see liberal Democrats lengthen the best hand of fine fellowship to Republicans when the article is gutting the Fouth Modification. Extra: “In a bid to get his holdouts on board, Johnson shortened the reauthorization interval for this system from 5 years to 2 years — which brought about heartburn in some corners of the Biden administration and would put the subsequent wiretapping struggle in a possible second Trump time period, if the GOP’s standard-bearer wins in November…. Johnson, a former member of the Judiciary Committee, has defended his change, saying he’s had entry to extra intelligence data since changing into speaker late final yr.” • Yeah, that’s how they suck you in.
Democrats en Déshabillé
I discovered this transcript of one in all FDR’s “Hearth Chats” (i.e, radio, then a brand new mass medium). From September 6, 1936:
I’ve been on a journey of husbandry…. I noticed drought devastation in 9 states.
I talked with households who had misplaced their wheat crop, misplaced their corn crop, misplaced their livestock, misplaced the water of their properly, misplaced their backyard and are available by means of to the top of the summer season with out one greenback of money assets, going through a winter with out feed or meals—going through a planting season with out seed to place within the floor.
I shall always remember the fields of wheat so blasted by warmth that they can’t be harvested. I shall always remember discipline after discipline of corn stunted, earless and stripped of leaves, for what the solar left the grasshoppers took. I noticed brown pastures which might not preserve a cow on fifty acres.
However on the finish he empowers his listeners:
Within the drought space individuals are not afraid to make use of new strategies to satisfy adjustments in Nature, and to right errors of the previous. If overgrazing has injured vary lands, they’re keen to cut back the grazing. If sure wheat lands needs to be returned to pasture they’re keen to cooperate. If bushes needs to be planted as windbreaks or to cease erosion they may work with us. If terracing or summer season fallowing or crop rotation is named for, they may carry them out. They stand prepared to suit, and to not struggle, the methods of Nature.
That is so lucid, humane, and — dare I say — empathetic (with not a hint of schmaltz. He understands their scenario). It’s laborious to think about a politician of ant occasion delivering a collection of speeches like this as we speak — and having individuals imagine them; certainly, sit up for them, and hear avidly.
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Why No Labels Didn’t Stick” [Slate]. “No Labels was merely the most recent iteration of a Beltway parlor trick that’s as outdated as time. In 2012 it was referred to as People Elect, and in 2008 it was Unity08. The core is a type of institutional McCainism: the concept that Democrats and Republicans are too excessive and that what the nation wants is a 3rd occasion that represents centrism, bipartisanship, and compromise. And on a sure degree you may perceive the considering; People proceed to precise summary assist for bipartisanship even because the nation has descended into elite-driven gridlock and resentment. … An extended-running Gallup survey [shows] that almost all of People would favor that politicians compromise fairly than ‘sticking to their beliefs.’…. The difficulty with these sorts of survey outcomes is that they’re extraordinarily delicate and infrequently don’t survive contact with real-world conditions. Telling a pollster that you just assist compromise within the summary is simple, however most voters don’t need it to be their very own aspect doing the giving. The precise demand aspect of the equation for institutional bipartisanship is due to this fact fairly small. The opposite drawback with the No Labels operation is that there already is a average, bipartisanship-minded political faction in america. It’s referred to as the Democratic Get together. For higher or for worse, that occasion continues to be the house of almost all the remaining ‘institutionalists’ in U.S. politics, and occasion management has repeatedly, over the previous decade, handed up alternatives to interact in retaliatory procedural maneuvering in response to GOP constitutional hardball, preferring as an alternative to face up for a long-vanished consensus politics that has nearly no assist on the opposite aspect of the aisle. President Joe Biden not solely leads that institutionalist occasion, however he’s additionally its most vocal and profitable backer of bipartisanship as a governing and political philosophy.”
Pandemics
“I’m in earnest — I cannot equivocate — I cannot excuse — I cannot retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
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Covid Sources, United States (Nationwide): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; contains many counties; Wastewater Scan, contains drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, however nationwide knowledge). “An infection Management, Emergency Administration, Security, and Normal Ideas” (particularly on hospitalization by metropolis).
Lambert right here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To replace any entry, do be happy to contact me on the handle given with the crops. Please put “COVID” within the topic line. Thanks!
Sources, United States (Native): 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 studies); 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 (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Sources, Canada (Nationwide): Wastewater (Authorities of Canada).
Sources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tricks to useful 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, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, sq. coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Keep secure on the market!
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Airborne Transmission: Covid
“Air flow throughout COVID-19 in a college for college students with mental and developmental disabilities” [PLOS One]. From the Summary: “There was a statistically important correlation between the whole time of room CO2 concentrations ≥1,000 and SARS-CoV-2 circumstances in an IDD faculty. Merv-13 filters seem to lower the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 an infection.” • Good to have CO2 focus bolstered as a proxy for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 as properly.
Testing and TrackingL H5N1
Hopefully the assessments no less than work:
The testing protocol is just too difficult. It additionally solely permits testing in cows that meet a particular profile. It solely offers for restricted variety of assessments per premises. 2/x
— Tom Inglesby, MD (@T_Inglesby) April 12, 2024
From the identical thread:
Since CDC hasn’t realized any classes from Covid besides the way to evade duty and stonewall aerosol science, it could be unreasonable to anticipate APHIS to be taught something from them; in spite of everything HHS and USDA would possibly as properly be on completely different continents! Nonetheless, “sentinel surveillance” jogs my memory of airport testing, so clearly we should always do it. Additionally, asymptomatic an infection doens’t essentially imply asymptomatic an infection, however we should always act as if it does. And sure, the USDA map is awful.
Transmission: H5N1
Carrying fomite transmission a little bit too far:
Chopping down bushes to cease Avian Flu.
Possibly we may simply construct extra scarecrows as an alternative.
“U.S. dairy farmers to ban guests, chop bushes.”https://t.co/f8tq17j5Vf
— Jammer🦈 (@AcrossTheMersey) April 11, 2024
Why chop bushes down when you might simply wash them?
“States start to limit cattle imports from these with influenza circumstances” [American Veterinary Medical Association]. “In an effort to forestall home cattle from being uncovered to extremely pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAI, extra particularly avian influenza Kind A H5N1), 17 states have restricted cattle importations from states the place the virus is thought to have contaminated dairy cows: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia. The U.S. Division of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Well being Inspection Service (APHIS) is not going to be issuing federal quarantine orders at the moment, neither is the company recommending any state quarantines or official maintain orders on cattle, the company introduced April 2. ‘Nevertheless, we strongly suggest minimizing motion of cattle as a lot as doable, with particular consideration to evaluating danger and factoring that danger into motion choices. Don’t transfer sick or uncovered animals.’”
“Is the Cattle Complicated Able to Transfer Previous the Influenza A Scare?” [Progressive Farmer]. “Proper when the market was in the midst of what gave the impression to be a robust early spring rally, worry and nervousness stole the cattle advanced’s thunder regardless that no beef cattle have the sickness, no dairy cows have died from being affected by the sickness, and no dairy herds have been depopulated. … However, fortunately, given the market’s closes early this week, it appears as if merchants are able to put their worry concerning the flu behind them. I’d hate to jinx our luck and see the market flip decrease once more this week, however it does appear as if the market has turned a brand new web page and it’s able to refocus on its fundamentals.”
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TABLE 1: Each day Covid Charts
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new as we speak; all others aren’t up to date.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution picture, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Home windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open picture in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (Biobot) Our curve has now flattened out at a degree far above valleys beneath Trump. Not an ideal victory. Notice additionally the realm “beneath the curve,” apart from peaks. That space is bigger beneath Biden than beneath Trump, and it appears to be rising steadily if inconsistently.
[2] (Biobot) No backward revisons….
[3] (CDC Variants) As of Might 11, genomic surveillance knowledge might be reported biweekly, primarily based on the supply of constructive check specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring each two weeks. 2. occurring twice every week; semiweekly.” Seems like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to fret about. Time will inform.
[4] (ER) CDC appears to have killed this off, for the reason that hyperlink is damaged, I believe in favor of this factor. I’ll attempt to verify. UPDATE Sure, depart it to CDC to kill a web page, after which announce it was archived a day later. And heaven forfend CDC ought to clarify the place to go to get equal knowledge, if any. I favored the ER knowledge, as a result of it appeared actually laborious to sport.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Seems like a really gradual leveling off to a non-zero baseline, to me. I suppose to a tame epidemiologist it seems to be like “endemicity,” however to me it seems to be like one other tranche of lethality.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC) Nonetheless down. “Maps, charts, and knowledge supplied by CDC, updates weekly for the earlier MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Division Visits, Check Positivity) and weekly the next Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Flattening.
[9] (Vacationers: Posivitity) Now up, albeit within the rear view mirror.
[10] (Vacationers: Variants) JN.1 dominates totally.
[11] Seems just like the Occasions isn’t reporting demise knowledge any extra? Possibly I would like to return to The Economist….
Stats Watch
There are not any official statistics of curiosity as we speak.
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Tech: “Why I Misplaced Religion in Kagi” [d-shoot]. “Between absolutely the blase perspective in direction of privateness, the 100% dedication to AI being the way forward for search, and the fully misguided use of the corporate’s restricted funds, I truthfully can’t see Kagi as one thing I may ever suggest to individuals. Is the search good? I imply…it’s probably not significantly better than some other search, it closely leverages Bing like DDG and the opposite indie search platforms do, the one actual killer function it has to me is the power to dam domains out of your outcomes, which I can at the moment solely do in different engines like google through a person script that doesn’t assist me on cellular. However what good is filtering out all the AI generated spamblogs on a search platform that desires to spit extra AI generated bullshit at me instantly?” • Fairly a rant, however I can’t consider somehow. Readers?
Tech: “Google drafts search engine to ‘floor’ AI leads to fact” [Axios]. “The tendency of enormous language fashions to hallucinate, or make issues up, is a key hurdle to broader enterprise adoption of generative AI.” Yeah, whoops, how come that wasn’t within the deck. Extra: “Google says that by integrating Google search into Vertex, its AI providing for companies, it can provide customers entry to newer data and citations indicating the sources for key knowledge.” • I don’t see how this works. How is the quotation linked to the textual content? The LLM can’t do it, it’s received hullabaloocinations. However all search can do is bolt on a search outcome to the LLM’s output; it’s solely parallel to what the LLM does. Anyhow, utilizing a crapified software to straighten out a bullshit machines hallucinations looks like a doomed endeavor.
As we speak’s Concern & Greed Index: 46 Impartial (earlier shut: 58 Greed) [CNN]. One week in the past: 62 (Greed). (0 is Excessive Concern; 100 is Excessive Greed). Final up to date Apr 12 at 1:48:00 PM ET.
Our Famously Free Press
Their template received away from them!
LOL, received an NYT electronic mail titled “The 100 greatest eating places in New York Metropolis, ranked by @pete_wells,” however this was the physique of the e-mail once I clicked: “Wirecutter headline (or some model of it) goes right here…Attempt to make use of curiosity hole and never give away an excessive amount of within the inbox” pic.twitter.com/o70Y14GjVs
— ☀️dr thrasher is recovering from the totality🌘 (@thrasherxy) April 4, 2024
This even occurs to the good ones….
Information of the Wired
“First languages of North America traced again to 2 very completely different language teams from Siberia” [PNAS]. “Nichols’ strategies contain using linguistic typology, a discipline that entails evaluating languages and organizing them primarily based on shared standards. To be taught extra about early North American languages, she compiled lists of language traits and utilized them to all identified languages. She then scored every of the languages primarily based on the revealed qualities. This allowed her to check the languages as a approach to discover resemblances amongst them and spot patterns. Nichols discovered that she may hint the languages spoken in early North America again to only two lineages, each of which originated in Siberia. They got here, she notes, with the individuals who made their manner throughout land bridges throughout Ice Age glaciation occasions. These two fundamental teams she discovered developed into completely different languages as individuals moved to completely different areas—she targeted most particularly on 60 of them. She discovered that lots of these languages have been additionally impacted by a number of waves of Siberians arriving in North America. She concludes that a few of the traits of the unique languages have been retained by means of the years and are actually within the present linguistic inhabitants.”
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Contact data for crops: Readers, be happy to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) learn how to ship me a verify in case you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to learn how to ship me pictures of crops. Greens are fantastic! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary crops! If you’d like your deal with to seem as a credit score, please place it firstly 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 TH:
TH writes: “This Bodhi tree lives on the Sherman Library and Gardens (Corona Del Mar/Newport Seashore, California).”
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