2:00PM Water Cooler 1/3/2025 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

More soon! –lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Brown Thrasher, Washburn University Vicinity, Shawnee, Kansas, United States. Busy, busy.

In Case You Might Miss…

1. New Covid charts drop, with Christmas hospitalization up in New York.
2. Mike Benz: X censorship and deplatforming.
3. Mangione: murder and social murder.
4. Nasal sprays: state of the market today.
5. Teen Vogue on “salting.”

Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

Spook Country

“FBI shares new details of suspect in D.C. pipe bombs plant on Jan. 6 eve” [Axios]. “Nearly four years after pipe bombs were planted outside the Democratic and Republican parties’ headquarters in Washington, D.C., the FBI on Thursday released new information and footage on the suspect…. The Committee on House Administration’s oversight panel said in its report the FBI initially ‘yielded a promising array of data and revealed numerous persons of interest.’ Then resources were later diverted and ‘there has been little meaningful progress toward the apprehension of the suspect,’ according to the report.”

Biden Administration

“Eyeing Potential Bird Flu Outbreak, Biden Administration Ramps Up Preparedness” [New York Times]. “The Biden administration, in a final push to shore up the nation’s pandemic preparedness before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, announced on Thursday that it would nearly double the amount of money it was committing to ward off a potential outbreak of bird flu in humans. Federal health officials have been keeping a close eye on H5N1, a strain of avian influenza that is highly contagious and lethal to chickens, and has spread to cattle. The virus has not yet demonstrated that it can spread efficiently among people.” And if it does… We can only hope that won’t be too late. And here we go: “It has also awarded $176 million to Moderna, a major maker of coronavirus vaccines, to develop a similar vaccine using mRNA technology against H5N1.” • Oh, swell. Learned nothing, forgotten nothing.

Trump Transition

“Mike Johnson reclaims speakership” [Politico]. • Too bad. MAGA misses an opportunity to throw a punch.

* * *

Fort Bragg nexus?

Breaking: It appears Matthew Livelsberger, who was incinerated in the Tesla explosion in Vegas, and Shamsud-din Jabbar (the man behind the New Orleans attack) were both stationed at Fort Bragg at one time and may have even overlapped

H/T @ComradeOhio https://t.co/xheBhYJZIo pic.twitter.com/7UOI4RX5AN

— ParaPower Mapping (@KlonnyPin_Gosch) January 2, 2025

Yes, that Fort Bragg:

Reread this yesterday. https://t.co/dmP0Sj1o1F

— Words Matter (@WordsMa30048486) January 3, 2025

If I were a spook, I wouldn’t see Fort Bragg as a hellscape of abuse, but a target-rich environment, rife with opprtunities for blackmail, honeytraps, and so forth. It would be irresponsible not to speculate! And then of course–

“U.S. Military Service Is the Strongest Predictor of Carrying Out Extremist Violence” [The Intercept]. “From 1990 to 2010, about seven persons per year with U.S. military backgrounds committed extremist crimes. Since 2011, that number has jumped to almost 45 per year, according to data from a new, unreleased report shared with The Intercept by Michael Jensen, the research director at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland. Military service is also the single strongest individual predictor of becoming a ‘mass casualty offender,’ far outpacing mental health issues, according to a separate study of extremist mass casualty violence by the researchers.” • Oh.

“Questions remain about soldier’s motive in Cybertruck explosion outside Trump’s Las Vegas hotel” [Associated Press]. “Investigators have identified the Tesla driver — who was burned beyond recognition [oh?] — as Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Green Beret from Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Clark County coroner’s office said his death was a suicide caused by the gunshot wound.” • The question I have is how he blew up the truck after shooting himself in the head. Timer? And why. Musical interlude (surprisingly topical lyrics):

* * *

UPDATE here is a cui bono buried in this statement:

🚨 BREAKING: Donald Trump releases new statement pic.twitter.com/r7rpOV9FrB

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 2, 2025

Cui bono being the statement one should always ask, even if the answer is not always clear. UPDATE: Or, upon rereading this today, a veiled accusation (“You and I both know why you won’t investigate this”).

* * *

“RFK Jr. Is Trying to Write Himself Out of 2019 Samoan Measles Epidemic” [Snopes]. “In 2019, Samoa experienced a measles outbreak caused by low vaccination coverage. Following Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be President-elect Donald Trump’s health and human services secretary, the talking point that Kennedy caused this outbreak via his activism re-emerged. The measles outbreak in Samoa was not “caused” by Kennedy. A tragic accident in 2018, in which two infants died from incorrectly mixed vaccines, and the controversial pause in vaccination that followed, bear primary responsibility for creating those conditions. This does not exclude the possibility that Kennedy exacerbated these existing conditions. Kennedy’s assertion that he ‘had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa’ is not credible. It is undermined by his direct engagement with the Samoan government on the topic of vaccines, his direct engagement with the Samoan anti-vaccine movement before, during, and after the epidemic, and his platforming of the two primary influencers advocating against vaccination in Samoa.”

Our Famously Free Press

Starter video that will become extremely important from Mike Benz on X deplatforming and censorship:

I’ve been working on a very detailed & formal 2 hour video going over my investigation into the free speech & censorship concerns that played out here on X this week. Need to attend a family trip now but wanted at least something up b4 leaving, so cobbled this 18 min placeholder pic.twitter.com/8wFsbeHoWT

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) January 3, 2025

Worth a listen, though I will wait for the presentation with the slides. (Benz seems surprised that Musk enshittified his own platform by censoring people who bugged him and taking their subscribers and accounts away. But all platforms enshittify; it’s their life-cycle under captialism.) The occasion of this Tweet is the Las Vegas bombing, but it seems like there’s pattern here:

Any libertarian who defends @elonmusk after he casually handed over personal data including faces and telemetry data to authorities without a warrant should rethink their whole life.

— ChudsOfTikTok 🖥️ (@ChudsOfTikTok) January 2, 2025

Democrats en déshabillé

“Democrats paid the price for abandoning moderate Clinton-era policies” [Mark Penn, FOX]. • The Democrats paid the price for letting brain genius Obama, The Wizard of Kalorama™, heave Sanders over the side, and replace him with a cognitively challenged thousand-year-old man. “Those who made Bernie impossible made Trump inevitable.”

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Luigi Mangione’s Apologists Are Undermining the Pursuit of Social Justice” [Xavier Symons, The Public Discourse]. The journal of the Witherspoon Institute. Fascinating lead: “I am an ethics professor, and in my moral philosophy classes, I often appeal to the universal belief in the immorality of murder to show why moral relativism—the view that morality is contextual and subjective—is mistaken. My expectation until now has been that students will agree with me. After witnessing the public response to the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, allegedly by Luigi Mangione, I am no longer that confident.” • Given the sort of student who self-selects into Witherspoon, that’s pretty amazing. Symons, at least in this post, doesn’t seem to think that social murder, unlike murder, can be categorized within any system of ethics. Feels kinda like mainstream macro….

“Your letters: Mangione family, religious freedom and an angry Advent” [Dr. Therese Craione Bertsch, National Catholic Reporter]. “In reading the story of Luigi’s life and family we are reminded of the essential vulnerability we all have. Luigi perceived that he could act on behalf of the oppressed by shooting someone who represented untold suffering. What sparked the dark turn from community social action to individual violence we may yet discover. Whatever the case, no one is invulnerable to the darkness. This event reveals the hopelessness Americans feel as the wealth produced from their labor travels to the millionaires and health services are held captive by insurers. It is scandalous usury, and it oppresses us in much the same way as interest rates and school tuition. This article provided a space to recall we owe Luigi’s family a great deal, and we feel the profound grief for the loss of a young executive’s life who was socialized in a capitalist system that directs all efforts to profit and transaction, objectifies human beings and is at the heart of all of violence.”

“‘New York Post Presents: Luigi Mangione Monster or Martyr?’ gives inside look into shocking UnitedHealthcare murder” [New York Post]. • The movie really seems to be about the Post newsroom, which is pretty lively place. This is good, because we need more newsrooms; individual contributors are not enough.

“Mangione Tragedy: Pain, Isolation, and the Survival Response” [Psychology Today]. “Feeling trapped, especially by pain, causes a physiological threat response leading to anger. In an angry state the higher levels of function in the neocortex are downregulated. Luigi Mangione was not only suffering but not shown a way out. Breaking free from chronic pain is not difficult and is what makes his story especially tragic.” • Not so sure about that last claim, though.

This argument seems reasonable to me:

A lawyer says Luigi Mangione’s criminal complaint is garbage and doesn’t make sense pic.twitter.com/PERmKRWIrR

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) January 1, 2025

The New York State charges are based on the items in Mangione’s possession in Pennsylvania. How can we be sure they were the items actually used in the alleged crime?

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

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

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

Look for the Helpers

I don’t like Hoerger’s model, but this is very good suggestion:

Since HEPA filters help improve home health, they can be a higher priority than other appliances. Apparently, it’s common to offer discount codes, but this 100% discount was rare & popular.

I would suggest that organizers reach out to their regional energy companies.
4/

— Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA (@michael_hoerger) January 3, 2025

Transmission: Nasal Sprays

Makes you wonder why the United States remains so primitive:

Dr. Leshan does not say, but the spray is Covitrap (study here). It does not seem to be available outside Thailand, though international marketing was attempted in 2022 (just another mark of insanity in the West’s approach to Covid).

More on “barrier” nasal sprays:

Quick 🧵on the current state of Iota-carrageenan nasal sprays: Efficacy, safety, Betadine shortages, buying options for US & Can. markets.

I-C sprays are the only option on the market that have a real-world randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study backing them up. 1/14

— Biff #SARSisAirborne 🍉 (@Biff248824) January 3, 2025

The idea of Iota-carrageenan nasal sprays is that the carrageenan “gums up the works” by creating a barrier that viruses do not penetrate. Betadine, which we have long recommended, was first, but there are others. (Betadine oral spray is iodine, also effective, but not carrageenan, there’s a little brand confusion here). This valuable thread shows that Betadine is in trouble — “Well, there’s your problem. It works!” — but there are retail alternatives.

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Employment Situation: “United States ISM Manufacturing PMI” [Trading Economics]. “The ISM Manufacturing PMI rose by 0.9 points from the previous month to 49.3 in December of 2024, ahead of market expectations of 48.4. The result reflected the softest pace of contraction in the US manufacturing sector since the 50.3 recorded in March, which was the sole period of expansion in the industry since September of 2022.”

Manufacturing: “Boeing is making yet another promise to do better. Can the prodigal child finally return?” [FirstPost]. “In its latest announcement, Boeing highlighted investments in workforce training, including enhanced programs for mechanics and quality inspectors. It also pointed to efforts to simplify production processes and reduce defects, particularly in the assembly of its 737 aircraft, a model that has been at the center of many controversies. The timing of Boeing’s statement is notable. Sunday (January 5) marks the anniversary of the near catastrophe aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, a stark reminder of the company’s struggles. While Boeing has acknowledged its shortcomings and pledged reforms, it remains to be seen if these efforts will restore confidence in the once-dominant aerospace giant.” • Boeing’s efforts seem, in large part, to “inspect quality into the product.” But Deming argues that can’t be done. We’ll see–

Manufacturing: “Boeing Adds More Surprise Quality Checks in Its Factories” [Wall Street Journal]. “Among the new procedures are another layer of random quality checks where plane parts are commonly removed and then put back. In the case of the MAX involved in last January’s incident, workers failed to replace bolts needed to hold a door-plug in place. The plug had been opened to repair faulty rivets. Other measures include inspecting fuselages made by supplier Spirit AeroSystems before they leave Spirit’s factory, additional worker training, confidentiality safeguards for employees who report problems and simplified instructions for building 737s.” • Surely “removed and then put back” raises the possibility of introducing new errors? Reading Deming, above, it seems that Boeing’s approach to quality has been wrong for decades; like a bumblebee that should not be able to fly, but does, Boeing’s quality assurance was performant. Perhaps it was Boeing’s workforce that made the impossible, possible? A workforce that Boeing managerment systematically assaulted, degraded, and decimated? Just asking questions….

Manufacturing: “Outgoing FAA Chief Says Boeing’s Safety Turnaround ‘Not a One-Year Project’” [Investopedia]. “Approaching one year since the Alaska Airlines (ALK) incident that saw a door panel detach from a Boeing (BA) plane in midair, outgoing Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) head Mike Whitaker said the plane maker’s safety turnaround plan is “not a one-year project.’ Whitaker wrote in a Thursday blog post that the agency’s ‘enhanced oversight is here to stay’ ahead of his departure from the FAA when U.S. president-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated later this month. ‘But this is not a one-year project,’ Whitaker wrote. ‘. That will require sustained effort and commitment from Boeing, and unwavering scrutiny on our part.’” • Hmm.

Manufacturing: “This Is What Whales Are Betting On Boeing” [Benzinga]. “Whales with a lot of money to spend have taken a noticeably bearish stance on Boeing. Looking at options history for Boeing we detected 34 trades. If we consider the specifics of each trade, it is accurate to state that 35% of the investors opened trades with bullish expectations and 52% with bearish.” • Hmm.

Manufacturing: Maybe Tesla’s stupid touch screen is dangerous, besides being stupid:

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 26 Fear (previous close: 27 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 33 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 2 at 1:24:36 PM ET.

Zeitgeist Watch

This is a terrific thread on the account’s Russian studies course, but it’s long. Excerpting from it:

Narrowing the focus to Covid:

Here is W.H. Auden’s “The Fall of Rome.” Not sure about those reindeer, I gotta admit. (I could have filed this under Elite Maleficence, in the Syndemics section, but the implications seem to be (even) broader.

Gallery

It takes a moment to spot the subject:

Today, the Punch and Judy show would be enormous, and loom over the tiny assembled figures.

Class Warfare

“What Is Salting, the Organizing Tactic Spicing Up the Labor Movement?” [Kim Kelly, Teen Vogue]. “The resurgence of the American labor movement is being led in no small part by a cohort of young, diverse, fired-up workers around the country. Union density remains embarrassingly low overall, but last month the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, released some genuinely inspiring numbers that suggest the perceived upswing in union activity is more than just a vibe. During the 2024 fiscal year, which ended in September, the number of union petitions filed jumped 27% compared with 2023 — and was more than double what the agency received in 2021. Why does this matter? Basically, filing these petitions is a concrete sign that more people are trying to unionize their workplaces… This new generation of organizers is embracing all sorts of strategies, including one of the oldest tactics in the pro-union handbook: salting. Salting is an organizing tactic in which a person gets a job at a specific workplace with the goal of unionizing their coworkers. This kind of shop-floor organizing has a long history within the labor movement, and was once so common it was thoroughly unremarkable; if you were a young worker with socialist or progressive ideas in, say, the early 1900s, it was the most normal thing in the world to start talking to your coworkers about unionizing as soon as you’d learned their names.” • It’s great that Teen Vogue has a labor beat, but why only Teen Vogue?

News of the Wired

“Why does modern life often feel like the seven circles of digital hell?” [Margaret Sullivan, Guardian]. Dante’s Hell has nine circles, not seven, so what is she on about?

Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From KM:

KM writes: “My morning run at the local park offered me this striking view yesterday. We had our first, much needed rainfall since back in late September overnight and it felt like all the colors had been washed away with the rain- but this golden hued maple tree is hanging on and from my view from the trail, it looked like a golden arched portal into Narnia.” Wow. I wish I could do landscapes (like this one).

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