2:00PM Water Cooler 11/7/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Patient readers, I rebooted the syndemics section, so the politics section is temporarily very light. More soon! –lambert UPDATE All done!

Bird Song of the Day

Northern Mockingbird, Sharpsburg., Washington, Maryland, United States. Adult Northern Mockingbird imitating the flight song of Willow Flycatcher.” “Sharpsburg” makes me think perhaps I should do a tour of Civil War battlefields; I saw “Antietam” in passsing today also.

In Case You Might Miss…

1. BIden addresses the nation.
2. Deploy the Blame Cannons!.
3. Ventilation in schools (in Australia and the United States).
4. Mushroom color atlas.

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

2024 Post Mortem

“I told you so” [Sam Kriss, Numb at the Lodge (DC)]. Good clean fun: “Do you remember Brat Summer? I remember Brat Summer. It was genuinely amazing, one of the most bizarre mass psychological phenomena I’ve ever seen. Before a clock spring popped out of Joe Biden’s forehead on live TV, Kamala Harris was the least popular Vice President in recent US history. There were a lot of reasons for this, but I think the big ones are these. Firstly, she was already deeply unpopular—0% polls, remember—before she became VP. Secondly, she’d done absolutely nothing with the position except emit strange and incomprehensible bromides whenever she opened her mouth. But as soon as she became the candidate, despite nothing about her actually changing, her approval rating skyrocketed. It turns out that all you have to do is tell the Democratic base that they ought to like someone, and they’ll just start liking her. I think this is evidence of an extraordinary generosity of spirit.” • Or Gleichschaltung.

* * *

“Watch live: Biden addresses nation after Democrats’ election losses” [The Hill]. • Clip:

BIden: “To see each other not as adversaries, but as fellow Americans.” Really? So all that stuff about “our democracy,” “fascism,” “Hitler”:

* * *

Deploy the Blame Cannons!

“Why Kamala Harris lost the election” [Politico]. And after Democrats excised Biden from the ticket, [Kamala] rapidly consolidated her moribund party, rallying women, setting TikTok and Instagram creators ablaze with supportive memes and raising eye-popping sums from donors. But the momentum advisers insisted she’d built failed to materialize. She never sufficiently buried Biden’s ghost, severely hamstringing her ability to sell voters on the idea that hers was the turn-the-page candidacy. It happened, simply, because Harris refused to make a clean break from the last four years when voters indicated that’s what they wanted. … ‘We ran the best campaign we could, considering Joe Biden was president,’ grumbled one Harris aide granted anonymity to speak freely. ‘Joe Biden is the singular reason Kamala Harris and Democrats lost tonight.” Another Harris aide said it was clear Biden should have made a graceful exit much sooner, allowing Democrats to hold a primary they believed Harris would have won.” And: “So resounding was the thumping that some of the party’s next-generation leaders were signaling the need for a deep autopsy of the party’s failures to stop the red wave.” • Lol. As if. Remember the Unity Reform Commission?

“This Time We Have to Hold the Democratic Party Elite Responsible for This Catastrophe” [Jeet Heer, The Nation]. “The key to understanding the Trump era is that the real divide in America is not between left and right but between pro-system and anti-system politics. Pro-system politics is the bipartisan consensus of establishment Democrats and Republicans: It’s the politics of NATO and other military alliances, of trade agreements, and of deference to economists (as when they say that price gouging isn’t the cause of inflation). Trump stands for no fixed ideology but rather a general thumbing of the nose at this consensus. The main fact of American politics in the post-Obama era is that an ever larger majority of Americans are angry at the status quo and open to anti-system politics.” And: “Democrats will need to radically reform themselves if they want to ever defeat the radical right. They have to realize that non-college-educated voters, who make up two-thirds of the electorate, need to be won over. They need to realize that, for anti-system Americans, a promised return to bipartisan comity is just ancien régime restoration. They need to become the party that aspires to be more than caretakers of a broken system but rather is willing to embrace radical policies to change that status quo. This is the only path for the party to rebuild itself and for Trumpism—which without such effective opposition is likely to long outlive its standard-bearer—to actually be defeated.” • So the Democrats are doomed then? (I know that parties do reinvent themselves, but this iteration of the Democrat Party seems unusually tenacious.)

“Dems rage against Biden’s ‘arrogance’ after Harris loss” [Politico]. “According to interviews with nearly a dozen officials and party operatives, Biden squandered valuable months only to end in disaster on the debate stage. And by the time he decided to pass the torch, he had saddled Harris with too many challenges and far too little time to build a winning case for herself.” However: “[Biden] aides and allies contended, Tuesday’s defeat was so comprehensive it’s unclear any Democrat could’ve won under such circumstances. The anti-incumbency anger ignited by inflation that had swept across Europe in recent years finally arrived in the U.S. And as working-class voters shifted decisively toward Trump, they expressed doubt Harris could’ve cobbled together a workable coalition even if she’d had more time to campaign.” And: “But beyond the policy turning points, critics faulted the president and his close advisers for badly misreading Democrats’ 2020 victory as driven by a groundswell of support for Biden himself — rather than a temporary expression of dissatisfaction over the pandemic and an unpopular incumbent in Trump.” • Given that Biden, like Kamala, was installed by a cabal, it’s odd to think there was ever a “groundswell” in Biden’s favor in any case. Third time is the charm, though, so perhaps the next candidate elected by the Democrat[ic leadership] will do better.

“All the Wrong Moves: An Early Autopsy of Kamala Harris’ Campaign” [Newsweek]. Not too early, I trust; we wouldn’t want the body to twitch. More: “The first flawed assumption was that there were further inroads to be made with Republicans who are uncomfortable with Trump. As I argued here recently, most of those people have already switched parties and have been Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents for years. Nothing that Trump did over the past six months, as crazy as this seems, is much different from things he did beginning in 2015. . That means that her closing flurry of campaign stops with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and indeed the whole “Republicans for Harris” effort along with the deeply conservative messaging and rhetoric that the campaign adopted beginning at the Democratic National Convention in August, was likely all for nothing. Worse, it may have actively alienated young people and lower-propensity voters who were looking for change. These are groups of voters who are disproportionately dissatisfied with the status quo, and nothing says “I am the status quo” more than cavorting with a widely disliked Republican congresswoman who is the icon of a long-vanished Republican political coalition that steered the country into several gigantic icebergs in the early 2000s and which no longer has any meaningful political constituency in America.” • I love the train metaphor, but surely with a billion dollars to spend, the Harris campaign did some internal polling on this? What happened?

“‘I’m Profoundly Disturbed!’ Sunny Hostin Denounces Trump Win as a ‘Referendum On Cultural Resentment’ in Jawdropping A-Block on ‘The View’” [Mediaite]. Hostin: ” And so I worry not about myself, actually, I don’t worry about my station in life. I worry about the working class.” • No, you really don’t.

* * *

“The end of an American world” [Le Monde]. “The path on which Trump, strengthened for his second term by his party’s success in the Senate, will take his country diverges fundamentally from the one charted by the United States since the end of the Second World War. It marks the end of an American era, that of an open superpower committed to the world, eager to set itself up as a democratic model. It’s the famous “shining city on a hill,” extolled by President Ronald Reagan. The model had been challenged over the past two decades. Now, Trump’s return is putting a nail in its coffin. Trump views the world solely through the prism of American national interests. It’s a world of power struggles and trade wars, which scorns multilateralism. A world where transactional diplomacy replaces value-based alliances. A world, ultimately, where the US president reserves his harshest words for his allies but spares the autocrats, who are seen as partners rather than adversaries.” • What’s Le Monde been smoking? France, like Germany, is a vassal state. How on earth is NATO a “value-based” alliance?

* * *

PA: “Why Kamala Harris lost the election” [Politico]. “Three weeks before Election Day in Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state, Jewish Democrats and their allies met behind closed doors with Harris officials in Pittsburgh, according to four people who attended or were briefed on the discussion. They said the surrogate operation was not up to snuff, a complaint echoed in other key states. They said the Pennsylvania team lacked relationships with key elected officials; that this mattered because it meant validators weren’t effectively being used to help persuade voters to support a candidate they barely knew…. Across the state, in Philadelphia, Latino and Black Democrats held similar private meetings with Harris’ team in the weeks leading up to Election Day, where they made many of the same complaints. And on Wednesday, Democrats were also starting to point fingers at Harris’ data team. A Pennsylvania Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely, said that the Harris campaign predicted higher turnout in key counties such as Chester and Montgomery in the Philadelphia suburbs. ‘This is looking like Robby Mook 2.0,’ the person said.” • A point upgrade? Ouch!

PA: “Harris concedes, telling supporters ‘do not despair;’ Pa. Senate race could head to a recount; Harris campaign pushes back on Philly Dem chair’s claims” [Philadelphia Inquirer]. “ice President Kamala Harris’ campaign sharply criticized Philadelphia Democratic Party Chairman Bob Brady after he laid blame with them for lower-than-expected turnout in the city. Brendan McPhillips, a senior adviser to the Harris campaign in Pennsylvania, said in a statement that their team ‘knocked more than two million doors in the weekend leading up to Election Day, which is two million more doors than Bob Brady’s organization can claim to have knocked during his entire tenure as party chairman.’ McPhillips added: ‘If there’s any immediate takeaway from Philadelphia’s turnout this cycle, it is that Chairman Brady’s decades-long practice of fleecing campaigns for money to make up for his own lack of fundraising ability or leadership is a worthless endeavor that no future campaign should ever be forced to entertain again.’” So why is Brady still chair? What does that say about the Party? More: “The criticism directed at Brady, the longtime head of the Democratic City Committee, came shortly after the former member of Congress told The Inquirer that he felt no responsibility for the red wave that descended on the state. Brady said money was an issue, and criticized the Harris campaign for paying only about ‘half’ of the money the city committee requested for its get-out-the-vote effort. Those funds, otherwise known as “street money,” are used to pay committee members to get out the vote.” • No walking around money? In Philly? Really?

Republican Funhouse

“Trump Wins Because He’s Just Better” [RealClearPolitics]. “Trump is noticeably more authentic, relatable, charming, clever, convincing, insightful, intuitive, and fun than Kamala. Trump won on both policy and personality.” • Back in 2023, Trump visited East Palestine, where Norfolk Southern’s toxic derailment occurred. I wrote:

“Watch: Trump stops at McDonald’s during East Palestine visit” [Fox8]. “While visiting the site of the horrific train derailment in East Palestine Wednesday, former President Donald Trump stopped in at a local restaurant — McDonald’s. ‘Is everyone willing to accept free food from Trump?’ he asked as he walked into the fast food spot, saying he planned to also purchase food for the local fire and police departments. He told the employees he knew the menu better than them and asked for a ‘nice array of things,’ while refraining to make an order for himself. Fielding questions from reporters, while getting his photo taken by nearby customers and employees alike, the President said he did not believe deregulation had anything to do with the train incident and that he had traveled to the area to make sure residents were taken care of.” • On “regulation,” see under Class Warfare; note that none of the reporters asked him about Precision Scheduled Railroading (and Trump, not being a detail person to say the least, probably doesn’t even know). Two Democrats react:

Combined IQ roughly 50 in the entire town. Trump trashed train safety rules. Now their water and land, not to mention themselves, are poisoned. I live 50 miles away from East Palestine, OH. I’m sorry for the people, but they made their own beds. https://t.co/KJE0L761AS

— Lincoln Belongs To The Ages (@Mr_Lincoln) February 22, 2023

Always good to see liberal Democrats calling for the deaths of their political opponents; it’s an ever-green trope! Note also the focus on being smart (vs. IQ of 50), the deregulation talking point (it’s Trump’s fault the brake systems are bad, not Precision Scheduled Railroading and the “hot box”). Then there’s the usual refusal to accept reponsibility (Trump and Biden killed a million people between them, Biden killed more, and in my view has the greater culpabiliity, because he should have known better than to adopt a policy of mass infection without mitigation).

Personally, I think this is a good look for Trump, and not just because Biden was off swanning about in Kiev; Trump looks good striding around on the February grass in the black coat and red hat, no tie; it’s a much better look than the pomp of Air Force One. Still waiting for quondam Presidential hopeful and Democrat, Sherrod Brown, to show up. Then again, why would be? They’re only citizens.

In many ways, this episode leads directly to the McDonald’s and garbage truck stunts. Trump really is very good, and clearly was the better candidate. (And it took Biden a year to make the same visit.)

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, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

Airborne Transmission

“Calls for indoor air quality mandate and $10 billion for school ventilation” [ABC Australia]. “A recent study of 60 New South Wales public schools found if windows were shut, classroom carbon dioxide (CO2) levels easily exceeded 2,500 parts per million (ppm), which was ‘really bad ventilation’, according to Mr Hanmer. In Australia, outdoor CO2 levels sit at around 415ppm. Australia’s National Construction Code specifies indoor CO2 levels should not exceed 850ppm averaged over eight hours, but this is only a guideline. Mr Hanmer said when CO2 went above 1,200ppm, it started to impair people’s cognition, which was a big problem in a classroom environment.” • So maybe if we ventilate we can come out even on the brain damage. Worth a shot!

“Ventilation in Schools, Offices, and Commercial Buildings” [United States Environmental Protection Agency]. New guidance. “Each year, respiratory viruses are responsible for millions of illnesses and thousands of hospitalizations and deaths in the United States. In addition to the virus that causes COVID-19, there are many other types of airborne respiratory viruses, including influenza (flu) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that can spread more easily indoors than outdoors since their concentration can build up indoors and people are often closer to each other. One important approach to reduce the spread of common respiratory viruses, is to increase ventilation, which is the amount of air moving in and out of a building. Ventilation removes indoor air that may be concentrated with airborne viruses and replaces it with fresh outdoor air. Ensuring proper ventilation is an important component of promoting good indoor air quality in general.” • Commentary:

This is not an endorsement, but here is the Korean nasal spray:

LUCA V Nasal Defense https://t.co/Ygjkbe430V

Should be back via Amazon shortly

— Adam Van Bavel (@AdamVanBavel) November 5, 2024

Transmission: Covid

“COVID Cases Update: Map Reveals Return of ‘Very High’ Water Virus Levels” [Newsweek]. “After weeks of decline, ‘very high’ levels of coronavirus have been detected in wastewater samples in the U.S. ‘High’ levels of viral activity are also on the rise with detections now in five U.S. states, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). ‘Very high’ levels of viral activity have been detected in Montana, with ‘high’ levels in Arkansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska and Wyoming.” • This is their map:

(You can tell that the map wasn’t created by CDC because it’s using red in a sensible way, instead of CDC’s horrid and incomprehensible colorway of greenish pastels). I don’t use this style of map except when I have to (Walgreens). I don’t believe state-level information about tranmission is useful to readers, especially for travel and masking purposes. “Covid is high in Helena, Montana” is useful. “Covid is high in Montana” is not.

Elite Maleficence

How eugenics plays out in the budget process:

Hey anyone remember thishttps://t.co/bo9piMWGxT pic.twitter.com/JdmwykM68w

— Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) November 6, 2024

“Inside Canada’s chaotic response to avian flu” [CTV News]. “For years, Canadian farmers and government agencies have waged a fierce battle against the new wave of avian flu, which experts say is much more transmissible than previous variants of the virus. Now, newly uncovered documents reveal the [Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)] and industry were caught unprepared for the outbreak, which overwhelmed the agency’s resources and forced it to rely on third-party contractors who sometimes broke bio-security rules meant to keep the virus in check. The IJF and CTV News have reviewed thousands of pages of CFIA documentation about their response to the current outbreak, including field reports, manuals on preferred killing methods, internal correspondence and dozens of invoices. The records, which were obtained via access to information law by animal-rights group Animal Justice, paint a picture of the CFIA’s struggle to contain a massive outbreak of avian flu in which more than 11 million Canadian farm birds were killed. Internally, top CFIA officials described the industry, and the agency, as being unprepared for such an outbreak. At times, inspectors described running out of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas — the preferred tool for euthanizing large numbers of birds. CFIA employees sometimes arrived at farms where many birds were already dead. They also relied heavily on private companies, the documents said, who sometimes failed to follow bio-security protocols meant to stop the spread of the virus. ‘CFIA has taken the lead to date because industry was not prepared,’ wrote CFIA Atlantic regional veterinary officer Dr. Margaret McGeoghegan in an October 2022 email to colleagues.” • Well, let’s hope whichever entity ends up running the Trump administration’s response to H5N1 — assuming the Biden Administration doesn’t manage to let it loose in the transition period — won’t make the same mistakes.

Now that the election is over, CDC says that Bird Flu Is Bad:

The timing of this is once again, INTENTIONAL. 5pm on the Wednesday after a horrifying US election. No one is paying attention. And that’s what I have been talking about. It’s the weaponized incompetence that has been causing and is still causing SO. MUCH. HARM. https://t.co/aaYB8bt0Un

— Erin C. Sanders, MSN, WHNP-BC (She/Her) (@ErinSandersNP) November 7, 2024

To be fair, I haven’t checked the CDC site. More on “headache”:

So the #H5N1 symptoms may include ‘headache’
Headache is the right word @CDCFlu? https://t.co/2p1weEDNxl pic.twitter.com/7R437duVyQ

— Danielle Beckman (@DaniBeckman) November 7, 2024

Yeah, but which pandemic are they talking about?

Leaked footage of the CDC handling the pandemic pic.twitter.com/uok7C9TJsR

— Outbreak Updates (@outbreakupdates) November 5, 2024

Lambert here: I have rebooted Table 1. There are, surprisingly, no bad surprises, except that New York Hospitalization has no new data (my oldest and most reliable data series, sigh). I think that if, during and after the Thanksgiving, there is no surge, I will rethink this presenation.

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of individuals filing for unemployment benefits in the US edged higher by 3,000 from the previous week to 221,000 in the last week of October, aligned with market expectations. Despite the slight increase, the count remained well below averages from earlier in the month, continuing to point to some degree of resilience in the US labor market. ”

Tech: “16 U.S. States Still Ban Community-Owned Broadband Networks Because AT&T and Comcast Told Them To” [TechDirt]. “For years we’ve noted how U.S. broadband is expansive, patchy, and slow thanks to mindless consolidation, regulatory capture, regional monopolization, and limited competition. That’s resulted in a growing number of pissed off towns, cities, cooperatives, and city-owned utilities building their own, locally-owned broadband networks in a bid for better, cheaper, faster broadband. Regional giants like Comcast, Charter, or AT&T could have responded to this organic trend by offering better, cheaper, faster service. But ultimately they found it far cheaper to undermine these efforts via regulatory capture, congressional lobbying, lawsuits, protectionist state laws, and misleading disinformation. Currently sixteen states have laws — usually ghost written by regional telecom monopolies — restrict or outright ban community broadband. Some of these laws are outright bans on community broadband, basically letting Comcast or AT&T veto your local infrastructure voting rights. Others erect elaborate, cumbersome restrictions on the financing and expansion of such networks and pretend that’s not a ban. The good news: The Institute For Local Self Reliance (where I study and write about broadband access) notes that these sixteen laws are a notable reduction from the 21 state laws we had in 2020. What caused the change? The pandemic home education and telecommuting boom highlighted the essential nature of broadband (or more accurately, the expensive, sluggish, terrible nature of monopoly options).

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 60 Greed (previous close: 57 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 46 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 7 at 2:06:30 PM ET.

Permaculture

“Gardens reduce seasonal hunger gaps for farmland pollinators” [Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences]. “Gardens can benefit pollinators living in surrounding farmland landscapes, but the reason for their value is not clear. Gardens are no different from many semi-natural farmland habitats in terms of the quantity of floral resources (pollen and nectar) they produce, but the timing of their resource supply is very different, which may explain their value. We show that gardens provide 15% of overall annual nectar in farmland landscapes in Southwest UK, but between 50% and 95% during early spring and late summer when farmland supplies are low. Gardens can therefore reduce seasonal nectar gaps experienced by farmland bumblebees. Consistent with this pattern, bumblebee activity increased in gardens relative to farmland during early spring and late summer…. We show that over 90% of farmland in Great Britain is within 1 km of a garden and therefore positive actions by gardeners could have widespread spillover benefits for pollinators across the country. Given the widespread distribution of gardens around the world, we highlight their important interplay with surrounding landscapes for pollinator ecology and conservation.” • Land use very different in the UK, I think, but the principle is the same.

Gallery

“Home” [Mushroom Color Atlas]. “The Mushroom Color Atlas is a resource and reference for everyone curious about mushrooms and the beautiful and subtle colors derived from dyeing with mushrooms. But it is also the start of a journey and a point of departure, introducing you to the kaleidoscopic fungi kingdom and our connection to it. My hope is that through this Atlas everyone will be inspired to learn more about the mycological world, and begin to understand the importance of the networks, connections and symbiotic relationships that live in our forests. Most importantly, understanding our impact on these delicate networks and our role as stewards of the land, bringing positive change to our local environments and our planet.” • Some swatches:

Book Nook

“It’s time to radicalize your book club” [Literary Hub]. “It’s important to get together — it’s time to activate your communities: your book club, your running group, your knitting circle, your group texts. We have to draw those bonds of community tighter. We don’t have time to wait four years…. To quote Kwame Ture, it’s the ‘height of bourgeois propaganda’ to think that your ‘responsibility is limited to a one-day vote. Politics is every day, every minute.’ Get your book club and your communities involved. Let’s start inviting each other into community organizations, mutual aid groups, unions, and political organizations working for something brighter. It’s time for solidarity and collective action.” • Fair enough, but “always has been.”

Musical Interlude

“Emptyset – ash” [neural.it]. “James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas, aka Emptyset, mark the fiftieth release for the Subtext label (founded by Ginzberg) with Ash. It is somewhat of a return to the label’s roots– the duo recorded the album in 2023 in Bristol, the city where Subtext was founded. Emptyset take advantage of spatialized recording techniques, dynamic controls, and a series of analogue machines, giving life to polymorphic, synthetic and sculptural compositional structures, echoing the sound system culture which have been central to everything that has emerged from Bristol since the nineties.” • Bristol is the home of Massive Attack, so, interesting. I’m not sure I like this, but here it is anyhow:

“A Symphony of Terror” (press release) [NewsWise]. “The screech of a dissonant violin, a ghostly whisper, a cry in the night, a sinister laugh, a distant rumble, a howling wind. These unsettling sounds are the stuff of horror films and haunted houses. They can make our blood run cold…. [P]sychoacoustics measures a sound’s timbre or quality on a scale of bright to dark. A joyful sound is generally ‘bright,’ energetic, harmonious and richer in the high frequencies. However, if the timbre is more dissonant, high frequencies can also arouse fear or terror because of their resemblance to human screams.”

News of the Wired

“The English Paradox: Four Decades of Life and Language in Japan” [TokyoDev].

“The Powerful Density of Hypertextual Writing” [Kottke.org]. Keying off this New York Times opinion piece: “What makes this piece so effective is its plain language and its information density. This density is a real strength of hypertext that is often overlooked and taken for granted. Only 110 words in that paragraph but it contains 27 links to other NYT opinion pieces published over the last several months that expand on each linked statement or argument. If you were inclined to follow these links, you could spend hours reading about how unfit Trump is for office. A simple list of headlines would have done the same basic job, but by presenting it this way, the Times editorial board is simultaneously able to deliver a strong opinion; each of those links is like a fist pounding on the desk for emphasis… [B]am! bam! bam! bam! bam! Here! Are! The! Fucking! Receipts! How the links are deployed is an integral part of how the piece is read; it’s a style of writing that is native to the web, pioneered by sites like Suck in the mid-90s. It looks so simple, but IMO, this is top-notch, subtle information design.” • 100% correct, and of course this is one approach any blogger will be very famliar with. That said, while style is its own truth, it is not truth, and perhaps not even a partial truth.

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 SK:

SK writes: “You’ve been skirting the edges, so thought I’d send you this. There are plants there… It was sprinkling ever so lightly this AM when I went out front to get the paper. There were spots of blue sky amidst the still-pink low clouds, but arcing over all was a complete rainbow. Ten minutes later boy #2 sent me this shot, from 5 miles away, looking across Corte Madera Creek at Mt. Tamalpais.” I suppose I could make an occasional exception for spectacular natural phenomena. But where are the ponies?

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