2:00PM Water Cooler 11/13/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Northern Mockingbird, Brewer park, Miami-Dade, Florida, United States.

Beautiful:

But not, one hopes, bearing new strains of flu….

In Case You Might Miss…

1. Trump DOD pick Hegseth.
2. Thomas Frank has risen from the grave.
3. Deploy the Blame Cannons!
4. Boeing layoffs, DEI axed.
5. Sun Slated To Be Dimmed by Tech Bros.

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

Trump Transition

“Trump Builds Out White House Staff as He Returns to Washington” [Bloomberg]. “Dan Scavino, who previously worked in the White House during Trump’s first term, will serve as assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff, Trump said in a statement on Wednesday. James Blair, who served as the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee political director, will take on the role of deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs. Taylor Budowich, who served as the CEO of the pro-Trump super political action committee, MAGA Inc., is being tapped as deputy chief of staff for communications and personnel. Those appointments are joining Stephen Miller, who will be deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor. Miller will have a key role in enacting Trump’s immigration policies, which the president-elect has said will center on a mass deportation of illegal immigrants and completing the construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border. The four all were active in Trump’s campaign, an operation which saw the Republican standard-bearer score an unexpectedly decisive electoral victory.”

* * *

“‘Who the f–k is this guy?’: Defense world reacts to Trump’s surprise Pentagon pick” [Politico]. “President-elect Donald Trump’s Tuesday night surprise pick of a conservative commentator and television host as his Pentagon chief shocked Washington, which had expected the nominee to be a seasoned lawmaker or someone with defense policy experience. National security officials and defense analysts had braced for surprises from Trump after experiencing his first four years in office. But even grading on that curve, they say the announcement of Fox News host and decorated Army veteran Pete Hegseth caught them totally off-guard. ‘[Trump] puts the highest value on loyalty,’ Eric Edelman, who served as the Pentagon’s top policy official during the Bush administration, said in an interview. ‘It appears that one of the main criteria that’s being used is, how well do people defend Donald Trump on television?’ One assessment was more blunt. “Who the fuck is this guy?” said a defense industry lobbyist who was granted anonymity to offer candid views. The lobbyist said they had hoped for ‘someone who actually has an extensive background in defense. That would be a good start.’” • “A good start” at what? Commentary:

Yesterday was a bad day for those who endorse “America First” in our foreign policy.

With reported Trump appointments of neocons Elise Stefanik (UN Ambassador), Mike Waltz (National Security Advisor), and…Marco Rubio (Secretary of State), many who hoped that Trump 2.0 would… pic.twitter.com/TB1p3FoBob

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) November 12, 2024

Hegseth (1):

Quite something to hear the upcoming US Secretary of Defense admit that the US would lose its “whole power projection system” in the first 20 minutes of a war with China 👇pic.twitter.com/6NZ0VzFtvl

“The Pentagon has a perfect record in all of its war games against China: we lose…

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) November 13, 2024

Hegseth (2):

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s new pick for Defense Secretary, says if you open up your Bible you will find that God granted Abraham the land of Israel, and this should apparently inform our understanding of the modern Israel-Palestine conflict pic.twitter.com/YVtzCQ5s5K

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) November 13, 2024

The Department of Governmental Efficiency:

$TSLA This is effectively a joke, and a huge blow to Musk/Vivek. That is… if you read the fine print, this new DOGE department will “provide advice and guidance from outside the government” – glorified consultants. This is a massive nothing-burger, and quasi fake office. New… https://t.co/XHX8oFJoFc pic.twitter.com/cFmt8j1ny0

— Gordon Johnson (@GordonJohnson19) November 13, 2024

I view this as a mark of favor to Vivek, although if I were Vivek I’d make sure not to be standing in the shadow of any falling safes.

* * *

“Dinner at Mar-a-Lago Is for Power Games” [New York Magazine]. “The billionaire X and Tesla owner is around so much he’s even got his own intro music. ‘I don’t know if you know this, but Trump DJs Mar-a-Lago from his iPad,’ says Melissa Rein Lively, another frequent presence at the club these days. ‘So he has a walk-on song for Elon Musk, which is ‘Space Oddity.’” • What a great metaphor; if there’s a vibe shift at Mar-a-Lago, it’s probably Trump. And elsewhere? (And speaking of Space Oddity: Anyone care to make book on how long Trump and Musk are BFFs? I wouldn’t call Space Oddity’s lyrics encouraging, as far as Musk’s fate.)

2024 Post Mortem

Deploy the Blame Cannons!

“The Elites Had It Coming” [Thomas Frank, New York Times]. Amazingly, Frank returns from his ostracism; the Democrats must be indeed panicked, pace Silver and Kilgore below. (This version is from the Salt Lake Tribune because the NYT is working hard at preventing the various archives from working.) Worth reading in full: This:

At the Republican convention in July, JD Vance described the ruination visited on his working-class town in Ohio by NAFTA and trade with China, both of which he blamed at least in part on Mr. Biden, and also the human toll taken by the Iraq War, which he also contrived to blame on Mr. Biden. Today Mr. Vance is the vice president-elect, and what I hope you will understand, what I want you to mull over and take to heart and remember for the rest of your life, is that he got there by mimicking the language that Americans used to associate with labor, with liberals, with Democrats.

And this:

“Liberals had nine years to decipher Mr. Trump’s appeal — and they failed. The Democrats are a party of college graduates, as the whole world understands by now, of Ph.D.s and genius-grant winners and the best consultants money can buy. Mr. Trump is a con man straight out of Mark Twain; he will say anything, promise anything, do nothing. But his movement baffled the party of education and innovation. Their most brilliant minds couldn’t figure him out. I have been writing about these things for 20 years, and I have begun to doubt that any combination of financial disaster or electoral chastisement will ever turn on the lightbulb for the liberals. I fear that ‘90s-style centrism will march on, by a sociological force of its own, until the parties have entirely switched their social positions and the world is given over to Trumpism. Can anything reverse it? Only a resolute determination by the Democratic Party to rededicate itself to the majoritarian vision of old: a Great Society of broad, inclusive prosperity. This means universal health care and a higher minimum wage. It means robust financial regulation and antitrust enforcement. It means unions and a welfare state and higher taxes on billionaires, even the cool ones. It means, above all, liberalism as a social movement, as a coming-together of ordinary people — not a series of top-down reforms by well-meaning professionals. That seems a long way away today. But the alternative is — what? To blame the voters? To scold the world for failing to see how noble we are? No. It will take the opposite sentiment — solidarity — to turn the world right-side up again.”

Because I hardly ever read the Times anymore, I discovered the above only by listening to this YouTube, linked to by alert reader Flora. The title is indeed clickbait, as Yves suggests; the word “landslide” occurs once in the transcript, only to be debunked (colors on a map are not votes). The discussion in fact serious:

This caught my eye (slightly cleaned up):

[FRANK:] The overturning of the New Deal Democrats, the Great Society Democrats was a generational story. I don’t know if there’s a social science term for it but people never betray their betrayals. Once you do something like that, once you turn the Democratic party, which these guys did in the 1970s, once you turn on the Democratic party and say we’ve had enough of organized labor, and we’ve had enough of the party of the New Deal and all that, you’re never going back. That is what you did as a generation. It is your accomplishment. They’re psychologically incapable of saying “Oh, we were wrong, our great moment as a generation was a mistake.” No human can do that.”

One funeral at a time.

* * *

“It’s 2004 all over again” [Nate Silver, Silver Bulletin]. “Of course, it didn’t work out so badly for Democrats. Bush’s second term was a disaster, marked by the failure of Social Security reform, the ongoing quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Hurricane Katrina. Democrats had a strong 2006 midterm, gaining 33… And then Barack Obama romped to the largest Electoral College and popular vote win of the 21st Century so far. Progressivism was in the ascent — until the Tea Party came along in 2010 and whipped Democrats back to reality again.” Because during the foreclosure crisis the only people [genuflects] Obama rescued were the banksters. More; “It’s hard not to see the parallels between Bush’s win in 2004 and Donald Trump’s last week. Like Bush, Trump won thanks partly to a surge of votes from Latino and Asian American voters. Like Bush, he’ll win the popular vote — probably by a margin of around 1.4 percentage points once all votes are counted. He’ll probably come just short of an outright majority, although it will be close, and Trump’s Electoral College margin was more impressive than Bush’s, who was only one state (Ohio) away from losing to Kerry. Certainly, the mood feels very different than after Trump’s first win in 2016. Democrats have approached the outcome in a more cerebral and analytical way than I was expecting, with manifestos about a new way forward for the party and unapologetic shifts away from ‘wokeness.’ The party is ready to move past the Clintons, the Bidens and the Obamas — well, unless Michelle Obama decides to run, I guess — and it would be stunning if there’s any appetite to nominate Harris or Tim Walz again. With a clear, undisputed outcome on relatively high turnout — likely in the range of 156 million votes, just a hair down from 2020 — there’s less talk about the term-limited Trump being an existential threat to democracy, rhetoric that may have been persuasive to people like me but never resonated with swing voters. And although you can find people who blame the New York Times for the outcome, for the most part, for 2026 and beyond.” • Four years of lawfare and “He’s a fascist!” followed by “Never mind!” and a shift tpoward “constructive strategic conversation”? Really? Do these people ever listen to themselves? To be fair, maybe in 2028 Democrats can again nominate a charistmatic fresh face who will completely fail to rise to the occasion and normalize and rationalize everything Bush Trump did. History may not repeat, but it circles the drain.

“Democrats Were Crushed in 2004, Too. It Didn’t Last Long” [Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine]. “In terms of the shock value of Bush’s reelection, it can credibly be argued that in retrospect the 41st president was a paragon of civility and moderation compared to the 45th/47th. But that’s not the way it looked to Democrats at the time. George W. Bush was widely regarded on the left as a war-mongering simpleton who had sold his party’s soul to rich people, defense contractors, and Christian fundamentalists.” And the post starts out musing on the importance of history! Bush was a far, far, worse President on policy than Trump, although of course Kilfgore, as a Democrat, prizes “civility and moderation” above all else. More: “As we now know, the sense of Republican strength and Democratic weakness that was so pervasive on Election Night in 2004 was ephemeral. Within months Bush gave Democrats a unifying issue with his clumsy and immediately unsuccessful efforts to “reform” Social Security.” In which, believe it or, the blogosphere played a role. Concluding: “the further we get from the pandemic and the [million deaths, oh wait…] inflation that followed it, the less Democrats will be held responsible for the chronic unhappiness of the American people. So while Democrats really should conduct a thorough self-examination of what went wrong since 2020, despair is premature and probably unwarranted.” • They campaigned on “our democracy.” “This might be our last election!” Then their candidate gets tossed aside like a limp rag, and suddenly everybody’s talking about the next midterms. Talk about a vibe shift!

* * *

“Scoop: The 2024 blame game finally comes for Hakeem Jeffries” [Axios]. Blah blah blah, all the way to this: “Jeffries is expected to be unopposed for reelection when House Democrats meet for their leadership elections on Nov. 19. Jayapal bristled at the notion she would withhold her support for Jeffries, saying ‘he is the leader of our party.’ Still, the senior House progressive who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Axios: ‘I don’t think anybody ever should take or can take their leadership for granted.’” • Why not? And how wonderfully clarifying on Jayapal.

* * *

“Liz Cheney Was an Electoral Fiasco for Kamala Harris” [The Nation]. “Unfortunately, while many Democratic tacticians were enthusiastic about Cheney’s jumping on board as a Harris backer, Republican voters couldn’t have cared less. The Cheney strategy was an abject failure that added few if any votes to the Democratic total, alienated voters who have no taste for the former GOP representative’s neocon extremism, and stole precious time from an agonizingly short campaign schedule…. This reality is most apparent in the election results from Ripon. The east-central Wisconsin city where abolitionists, land reformers, and utopian socialists founded the Republican Party in 1854 seemed ripe for a cross-party appeal. Ripon has been a Republican stronghold for 170 years, but the city is also a college town that in the past has shown a good measure of enthusiasm for Democrats such as Barack Obama. But that’s not how things played out on Election Day. On November 5, Trump won 53.8 percent of the vote (2,097 ballots) in the city of Ripon, while 45 percent (1,753 ballots) voted for Harris. That was a worse finish for the Democratic ticket than in 2020, when Joe Biden won 46.6 percent (1,820 ballots), while 51.7 percent (2,019 ballots) voted for Trump. But, surely, Ripon was an anomaly. No. Definitely and unequivocally no.”

“Lichtman blames bad election prediction on disinformation, Elon Musk” [The Hill]. “Lichtman pointed to conservative media platforms and Musk, who poured millions into President-elect Trump’s campaign and has become one of his loudest media cheerleaders, as a factor in his inaccurate prediction. Musk had helped fuel the spread of false or misleading information online about issues like immigration, hurricane relief and the war in Ukraine, Lichtman said, effectively ‘putting his thumb on the scales.’” • Another way of saying this is that Lichtman’s model isn’t valid any more, because our political economy changed out from under it.

* * *

The House:

Slim and razor thin: The GOP is on pace to have the smallest House majority at the start of a Congress since Alaska & Hawaii became states.

If this past Congress is any guide, we could be looking at one of the least productive Houses in the last 50 years… pic.twitter.com/0JVy3zvoeK

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) November 13, 2024

The Senate:

“Thune elected Senate majority leader” [The Hill]. “Thune has served as Senate Republican whip, the No. 2-ranking position in the Senate GOP leadership, since 2019, and largely managed operation of the Senate floor after McConnell suffered a concussion from a fall in 2023…. Thune is well liked among his Senate Republican colleagues, and his affable, humble approach to managing the conference has earned the trust and confidence of fellow GOP senators… He crossed swords with Trump in December 2020 when he whipped colleagues to oppose an effort by Trump allies to block the certification of President Biden’s victory in the presidential race. Thune declared the effort to throw out Biden electors would ‘go down like a shot dog,’ prompting an angry response from Trump, who called him a ‘RINO’ and called for him to face a primary challenge in 2022. Trump’s threat of political retaliation didn’t amount to much, as Thune easily won reelection. Thune tried to mend fences with Trump in recent months by visiting his home at Mar-a-Lago in March and toning down any criticism of the GOP presidential nominee when asked about his controversial statements.”

Our Famously Free Press

“With Surge in New Users, Bluesky Emerges as X Alternative” [New York Times]. “[Bluesky] has gained more than a million new users in the week since the election, a company spokeswoman, Emily Liu, said on Tuesday. The majority of the new users live in the United States, Canada and Britain, she added…. New or freshly active users on the platform include celebrities (the rapper Flavor Flav, the author John Green), Democratic political figures (Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Chasten Buttigieg, husband of Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary) and media personalities (Mehdi Hasan, Molly Jong-Fast).” • Wow, Molly Jong-Fast. I’m sold.

“Guardian will no longer post on Elon Musk’s X from its official accounts” [Guardian]. “In an announcement to readers, the news organisation said it considered the benefits of being on the platform formerly called Twitter were now outweighed by the negatives, citing the ‘often disturbing content’ found on it.” • I practically live on Twitter, and the algo occasionally feeds me stuff on the Azovs. So…

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: Covid

“Measurements and Simulations of Aerosol Released while Singing and Playing Wind Instruments” [American Chemical Society]. From 2021 (!). From the Abstract: ” We found that plumes from musical performance were highly directional, unsteady and varied considerably in time and space. Aerosol number concentration measured at the bell of the clarinet was comparable to that of singing. Face and bell masks attenuated plume velocities and lengths and decreased aerosol concentrations measured in front of the masks. CFD modeling showed differences between indoor and outdoor environments and that the lowest risk of airborne COVID-19 infection occurred at less than 30 min of exposure indoors and less than 60 min outdoors.” • Commentary:

& the other one that shows how to reduce the aerosols: https://t.co/INMR0jreYu

That’s why I’ve been SO irate w music ed since the beginning; we did the research. We started protecting students. & then they went right along with the great unmasking & let it spread thru ensembles

— ✨🎶Kristennnn🍉✨ (@singingsox) November 12, 2024

Helpful EPA guidance:

If you’re fighting for clean air in your school district, in your vocation, in your state or province or in a lawsuit, you can now point to the US @EPA‘s guidance that ASHRAE should be consulted, specifically Standard 241: Control of Infectious Aerosols.https://t.co/lYRUugYByT pic.twitter.com/JlwSsNB40o

— Blake Murdoch (@BlakeMMurdoch) November 4, 2024

Transmission: H5N1

How is it that Bonnie Henry is still in office?

Full force H5N1 has a 58% mortality rate, it is AIRBORNE, foodborne, waterborne, fomite, blood borne, poo, etc. Bonnie Henry, laughs & states, ON VIDEO, there will be no public safety measures for human to human transmission ☣️. This is criminal pic.twitter.com/n6KgXdlatu

— Sass (@sasswashere) November 12, 2024

I know I should do a Bonnie Henry takedown, but… some figures are too repellent even for me.

Maskstravaganza

“The Multiplicative Power of Masks” [Aatish Bhatia ⨉ Minute Physics]. “We now know that masks have an outsized effect on slowing the spread of COVID-19. And yet, some people oppose wearing masks because they view this as a personal choice rather than a public health issue. This misses the big picture because masks protect the wearer and the people around them. This two-way protection makes widespread mask-wearing a powerful way to extinguish an epidemic. By doing the math on masks, we’ll see how when 60% of people wear 60% effective masks, disease transmission drops by as much as 60% — roughly what’s needed to stop the spread of COVID-19.” • And whatever the next airborne pandemic might be.

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

“Why Boeing Killed DEI” [City Journal]. “Earlier this month, Boeing’s newly installed CEO, Kelly Ortberg, quietly dismantled the DEI department and accepted the resignation of the office’s vice president. To understand how this happened, we reached out to [an] insider.” “[INSIDER]: [Ortberg] is looking at every business and every process with fresh eyes, asking the basic question, ‘Does this help us build airplanes?’ HR organizations like to make the argument that you need the right mix of skin color and gender preference to perform and innovate. But everyone who has had to build things knows that what really drives value is integrity, hard work, and technical expertise. This doesn’t mean that bias doesn’t exist and that we don’t need to fight it, but he [Ortberg] gets that the best culture directly promotes values and results, not identity groups.” And: “oeing more than anything needs an aligned workforce focused on building airplanes, and it’s an easy decision to reject the divisive and U.S.-centric language of DEI in favor of a unified vision for a diverse, global company.” • Thing is, if Boeing were a co-op like Mondragon, I can see that Boeing asking exactly the same question: “Does this help us build airplanes?”

Manufacturing: “Boeing Forecasts 67% Growth In Global Air Cargo Fleet By 2043, Driven By Asia Demand” [Benzinga]. “Boeing projects a 4% annual increase in air cargo traffic through 2043, anticipating a 67% growth in the global freighter fleet. Asia-Pacific leads demand, requiring 980 new freighters; North America follows with 955 as Boeing forecasts robust e-commerce growth.” • Plus freighters have less reputational and legal risk; if they fall out of the sky, there are no pesky passengers.

Manufacturing: “What Can Be Learned From Boeing’s Downfall?” [Forbes]. ” Once-proud society that honored engineering successes and problem-solving gave way to a perspective that undervalued technical knowledge in favor of financial results. Since the company’s fundamental safety criteria were violated, this decline of basic values not only harmed employee morale but also resulted in oversights and expensive blunders. Clearly, fostering innovation and preserving quality depend on a mission-driven culture whereby staff members are empowered to defend business ideals. Companies that want long-term success must stick to their basic goal and acknowledge the importance of the knowledge of their staff, particularly in sectors where quality and safety take front stage.” • Take software — please!

Manufacturing: “Boeing Faces Risk as It Starts Job Cuts in Tight Labor Market” [Bloomberg]. “[T]he company is staffed for peak production levels it likely won’t see for years, especially after a 53-day strike largely halted work in its plants across the west coast. Boeing had 171,000 employees at the start of this year, 12% more than the 153,000 it employed five years earlier, when its factories were at their pre-crisis peak…. ‘We need to reset priorities and create a leaner, more focused organization,’ Ortberg said during an Oct. 23 earnings call. The cuts are intended to ‘focus on consolidation of areas where we’re not efficient, and we need to continue to focus on reducing non-essential activity.’” • Defense…

Manufacting: “Boeing layoffs weren’t just a strike threat” [Quartz]. “Reuters reports that the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, the union representing Boeing engineers, received word from Boeing that 60-day layoff notices would be issued to its members this Friday. Seattle-area CBS (PARA) affiliate KIRO says that the machinists’ union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, has no updates to share…. When Boeing first announced the layoffs, it blamed the move on ‘near-term challenges’ tied to the strike. But it is becoming clearer that the company’s cash-conscious caution will not end now that the machinists are back at work. Despite raising mountains of cash to refill its stoppage-drained coffers, the company still has a long way to go to dig itself out of the $6 billion loss it incurred last quarter.” • Maybe axe the troublemakers? I’m sure we’ll find out.

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 69 Greed (previous close: 68 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 58 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 13 at 1:25:26 PM ET.

Gallery

Winter is coming:

Zeitgeist Watch

“Silicon Valley’s Elite Pour Money Into Blotting Out the Sun” [Bloomberg]. “[T[here are people working in semi-secret on technology to tweak the weather, even if they’re nowhere close to controlling hurricanes. A growing number of Silicon Valley founders and investors are backing research into blocking the sun by spraying reflective particles high in the atmosphere or making clouds brighter. The goal is to quickly cool the planet. A couple of startups are already trying to deploy this untested technology or betting governments will eventually use it, while a cluster of Bay Area nonprofits are backing research into its planetary impact. With the world hotter than at any point in human history and emissions showing no sign of falling, the pitch is that dimming the sun is a relatively cheap way to turn the heat down. ‘‘ said Andrew Lockley, a UK-based independent researcher in the field scientists call geoengineering. ‘History will judge whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.’” Well, that’s re-assuring. “Many tech types turn to science fiction for inspiration, and in the case of geoengineering there’s a template: Neal Stephenson’s 2021 novel Termination Shock. The plot follows a Texas billionaire who takes climate matters into his own hands by building the world’s biggest gun to shoot particles into the sky to reflect incoming sunlight.” • But only certain sorts of science fiction; I don’t think Ursula LeGuin, Philip K. DIck, or even WIlliam Gibson figure largely in the tech bro Weltanschauung. For a review of Termination Shock, see The Ironies of Neal Stephenson: Thoughts on His Thriller, Termination Shock at NC.

News of the Wired

“My Social Anxiety Cheat Sheet for Mingling” [Adam Grant]. “I got this advice from a manager about dealing with people in general and love it. People like to talk about themselves and they like it when you encourage them to do so. When you get people to keep talking about themselves, it’s less work for you, and it makes them feel good talking to you.” • Hmm.

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 expat2uruguay:

expat2uruguay writes: “Spring cuttings waiting for further processing tomorrow and hopefully to become new plants.” Uruguay being in the Southern hemisphere.

Once more, kind readers, thanks to those who have sent in plant images. However, the queue is still short, and that always makes me nervous. Do you have an images to send in, especially of autumn produce or winter projects? Thank you!

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