By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
House/Purple Finch, Pine Plains; Stissing Ave. & Poplar Ave., Dutchess, New York, United States. “Could be a Purple Finch as well. PM is unsure what bird this is because of its uncommon song. This bird is perched on top of a Norway spruce. PM is 1/2 block from an appliance store. The bird took off with no flight call.” From 1975, back when birders added their observations to the recording.
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
Less than a year to go!
* * * Trump (R): “Trump fraud trial LIVE: Ex-president awaits blockbuster verdict as hush money court date set” (live) [Independent]. “Judge Arthur Engoron is expected to deliver a verdict in Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud trial on Friday that could see the former president hit with millions of dollars in fines and sanctions. The justice has already ruled that Mr Trump inflated his wealth on financial statements that were given to banks and insurers to make deals and secure favourable loans. New York attorney general Letitia James is seeking $370m and a ban on the defendant and his fellow Trump Organization executives from doing business in the state.” • This is the case about inflated New York real estate values.
Trump (R): “Trump to stand trial on March 25 in NY criminal hush money case” [Reuters]. • This is the case about a rich dude paying off a mistress.
Trump (R): “Trump-Appointed Judge Denies Ex-President’s Motion to Delay Deadlines in Documents Case” [Mediate]. • This is the case where the accused didn’t dump the documents in a box in his garage next to “household detritus.” Honestly, I’m all for the rule of law, I really am, but could there please be a single tier?
* * * Trump (R): “Fani Willis just gave Donald Trump exactly what he wants” [MSNBC]. “For those who generally have faith in Willis, she was understandably enraged and gave a master class in how to defend oneself in a public setting. For others, her protestations were over the top. Even so, the fact that there was even a hearing into Willis and whether she has a financial conflict of interest in the case was a windfall for Trump.”
Trump (R): “5 revelations from the explosive Fani Willis hearing in Georgia” [The Hill]. “Tensions exploded [(!)] Thursday during a frenetic [(!!)] hearing to determine whether Fulton County’s district attorney’s office should be disqualified from continuing its 2020 election interference prosecution of former President Trump and his allies due to a relationship between top prosecutors on the case…. At the start of her testimony, she railed against Roman attorney Ashleigh Merchant for filing the ‘dishonest’ motion to disqualify the district attorney, accusing her of spreading ‘lies’ and implying she slept with Wade ‘the first day [she] met with him.’ ‘When someone lies on you — it’s highly offensive,’ Willis said after McAfee asked her to stay on topic with the questioning.” • The “cash” stuff is interesting, too, but I don’t know what the norms are, in this context….
Trump (R): “Jack Smith is in a hurry, but he can’t say why” [Washington Examiner]. “The reason for Smith’s haste has been obvious all along: He wants Trump to be tried, convicted, sentenced, and possibly jailed before the Nov. 5 presidential election. Could anything be clearer? Everything that Smith has done since Aug. 1, 2023, when the indictment was unsealed, has been to rush the case to a decision before deadline — and the deadline has always been the 2024 presidential election. But here’s the problem for Smith. The Justice Department forbids prosecutorial interference with elections. The guidelines are very clear: ‘Federal prosecutors and agents may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.’ It is now Feb. 15. The South Carolina primary is on Feb. 24, followed by the Michigan primary, followed by Super Tuesday. Trump has already won Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada and is the prohibitive favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination. Trump is also leading President Joe Biden in the RealClearPolitics average of national, head-to-head polls. So it is fair to say that so far in this election year, Trump is the leading candidate to be the next president of the United States. And Jack Smith is frantically trying to put him in jail before the election. That might, just might, be what the Justice Department intends to prevent when it says federal prosecutors ‘may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election.’ That is a bad thing, and Jack Smith is doing it.”
* * * Trump (R): “Sharp Elbows, Even Sharper Knives in Trump Inner Sanctums” [Philip Wegman, RealClearPolitics]. “While some detractors try to dismiss [Turning Point founder Charlie] Kirk as a young and inexperienced activist, the reach of the 29-year-old populist cannot be denied. He has a larger social media following than many of his critics, and politicians regularly compete for speaking slots at TPUSA events, which draw crowds of young conservatives in the thousands. His latest ambition: an eye-popping $108 million get-out-the vote campaign via TPUSA’s political arm in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin to swing the election. ‘I don’t think Trump is fully aware of that plan. When he finds out, he’s not going to be happy at all,’ a Republican operative in close contact with the Trump campaign said of the multi-million dollar effort. The cost is exorbitant compared to traditional door-knocking efforts, with little guarantee of success, the operative noted. When Trump learns of the ambitious spending plan, funded by donors who would otherwise give directly to his campaign, they predicted, the former president ‘will be pissed out of his mind.’” • Let’s wait and see.
Trump (R): “How Donald Trump Can Beat Joe Biden” [Louis Perron, RealClearPolitics]. “The first challenge for Donald Trump is that he has to make sure the 2024 election remains a referendum on Joe Biden. I say that because it’s in the very nature of Donald Trump’s personality to make everything about himself…. It’s been said that great campaigns are never a rerun of previous great campaigns. In that sense, Donald Trump needs to evolve and reinvent himself. He is no longer the outsider he was back in 2016. If public opinion were static, people like me would not have a job. Donald Trump needs to do something that has become unfashionable in U.S. politics, namely to reach out, and to do so in a meaningful way. One of the much-written about segments of swing voters that will be decisive in November is suburban women. Jan. 6 and abortion are just two issues that they want to see addressed…. One could argue that in 2020, Trump did a little bit of outreach with respect to black men, and it worked surprisingly well. (I actually think that if he had done more of it, he could have won reelection)…. ? No, I don’t. I have worked for candidates who were in their late 70s and early 80s, and I can confirm from my own experience what is being said: It’s difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. And this is particularly true for people who have won elections before. That said, it’s not impossible either. After all, Kellyanne Conway was able to make Donald Trump a more disciplined candidate during the final months of the 2016 campaign.” • Hmm.
Trump (R): “Trump world considers having the former president deliver the official GOP State of the Union response” [NBC]. “Aides and allies close to former President Trump have discussed the former president giving the official Republican response to President Joe Biden’s March 7 State of the Union address, according to five people familiar with the talks. Two of the sources said that Trump himself has discussed it, but both said he is leaning against the high-profile gig. The decision on who will deliver the response rests with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. A source familiar with the planning of the State of the Union address said there has been no outreach by the Trump campaign to those planning the GOP rebuttal…. Nothing smacks of Washington politics more than the official out-of-power party response to the State of the Union. That’s at odds with Trump’s message that, as much as he understands the nature of politics in the nation’s capital, he is not a creature of what he calls ‘The Swamp.’” • As if Trump couldn’t alter the setting to avoid this!
* * * Biden (D): “Democrats Are Too Resigned to Biden” [Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal]. Arguments against a change in candidates in italic. “It’s too late. Lyndon B. Johnson, the last president to decline to seek a second term, dropped out on March 31, 1968. There was still time for contenders to launch and fund races. The primary rules have changed since then, and ballots have been printed up. Mr. Biden can free his delegates, either from the day he steps aside or at the convention. Only political romantics think an open convention is possible. You can’t know it’s impossible. Now and then in life you have to say, ‘History, hold my beer.’” • I don’t think there’s any mechanical or technical problem that a smoke-filled room can’t solve. The issue is introducing the candidate to the country; that takes either a genuine, professionally run campaign, or a celebrity. While it is true that nobody (normal) pays attention to the election until after Labor Day, an August start gives an awfully short runway for a professional campaign (and a level of intensity, ferality, and unity — “total commitment” — I am not sure that Democrats, as a party, possess). A celebrity, on the other hand, does not need to be introduced to the country; that’s why Oprah is not an insane idea as a type, regardless of her inclinations personally. (Celebrity-hood was also one of Trump’s advantages, let us recall.) No doubt a certain generation of Democrats would love to run Martin Sheen, but please, no.
Biden (D): “Yes, Democrats, it’s Biden or bust” [Vox]. “Other Democratic stars, like Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Secretary Pete Buttigieg, are also loyal Biden Democrats, poll worse than Biden, or are biding their time. And to bypass Harris for one of them also opens up potential ire from Black voters, without whom Democrats can’t win. Should a different, other Democrat emerge, with the vocal support of, I don’t know, Barack Obama and a core of Biden-critical strategists and politicians, and should first lady Jill Biden and other Biden confidantes approach Biden and convince him to drop out, we’d likely head toward a brokered convention with multiple rounds of voting. That also opens up the chance for even more chaos and disunity among Democrats. Does that seem worth it to anyone in Democratic politics right now? The simple answer is no. It’s too late.” • I agree on Doctor Jill Biden’s critical role. Too bad Gina Haspel isn’t a Democrat. She’d be ideal!
Biden (D): “Biden Can’t Win Without Help From Trump” [Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal]. “The Biden campaign took a torpedo to its engine room last week in the form of special counsel Robert Hur’s report. Mr. Hur wrote that he chose not to seek an indictment of the president for mishandling classified material in part because he thought a jury would see Mr. Biden as a ‘sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’… To win, Team Biden has only one option—an all-out attack on Mr. Trump, using every means of communication every day in an assault of unusual scope and expense. Victory would require Mr. Trump’s cooperation in making truly outrageous appeals to his hard-core supporters that alienate swing voters. Fortunately for Mr. Biden, the former president has done his best to help.”
Biden (D): “Biden Must Win. But How?” [Pamela Paul, New York Times]. “[Biden] needs to start making the threat of a second Trump term — in all its unbridled terror — real now. Lord help us, we’re relying on him to prevent that from happening.” • “Make [them] afraid some more, Shaddam. I shouldn’t enjoy this, but I find the pleasure impossible to suppress.” –Frank Herbert, Dune
Biden (D): “Biden Is Set to Visit East Palestine, but Is He a Year Too Late?” [New York Times]. Throwing a flag on the Betteridge’s Law violation. “But politics may be inescapable. Even as pro-Trump demonstrators rally on one side, others plan to hold a protest demanding that Mr. Biden bring additional aid to the community. And some residents worry that one year after a flurry of politicians turned their small town into a prop, it is about to happen again.”
* * * Kennedy (I): “RFK Jr.’s Libertarian play” [Politico]. “If Kennedy is the [Libertarian] Party’s nominee, his campaign and associated PACs won’t have to shell out millions of dollars and collect hundreds of thousands of signatures to get on the general election ballot in states across the country…. The Mises Caucus — a more radical libertarian faction organized around the work of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises — has been a power center within the party since its endorsed candidate, Angela McArdle, won the national committee chairmanship in a 2022 landslide victory with nearly 70 percent of the vote. It controls the majority of the delegates who will vote on the party’s presidential nominee at the national convention in May. While McArdle has suggested that the party may be open to a Kennedy bid, last weekend the Mises Caucus came out formally in opposition to his candidacy, making it unlikely that Kennedy has a real shot at the nomination. McArdle did not respond to a request for comment.” • I shouldn’t enjoy this….
“Joe Manchin suggests Mitt Romney, Rob Portman as potential running mates as he flirts with third-party ticket” [FOX]. • Dear Lord.
* * * NY: “5 takeaways from Democrats flipping George Santos’ House seat in New York” [PBS]. Undistracted by the liberalgasm because going Republican Lite on immigration might not be a loser in the ‘burbs: “Democrats also outspent Republicans $14 million to $8 million in this race, a massive sum for a special election…. Democrats hammered Pilip’s ethics, likening her to Santos. Over Santos’ face, this widely run ad begins: ‘Same story. New name.’ It then shows Pilip and says she’s ‘about to embarrass us again’ and goes on to drop the oppo file about ‘unpaid bills from her family’s business” and that she ‘also owed more than $100,000 in unpaid taxes to the IRS, even filing a false financial disclosure. … She’s an ethical nightmare.’ Suozzi is a known quantity on Long Island. He’s a former Nassau County executive and is a former congressman. Democrats essentially billed the race as a moderate, adult in the room vs. an extremist, MAGA candidate.”
NY: “Democrats Have Themselves a Victory in New York. But They Also Have a Problem” [Slate]. “The key to this race was the money. Democrats spent nearly $14 million, almost double the GOP’s $8 million investment in the race. According to AdImpact, the total ad spend for just this Long Island district totaled an eyewatering $21.4 million. That’s more than quadruple the outlay of the 2022 race that yielded Santos…. Waiting for the national party to airdrop a spending advantage of millions of dollars is not a sustainable way to win elections. The difficulty of this win and the price tag show the cost of the New York State Democratic Party’s refusal to reconcile with the failures of the party apparatus after the 2022 midterms. This district will also have to go back to the polls for this same race in November. How many millions will that cost? It could be a problem for Biden too. He may be old. He may be unpopular. But New York Democrats are a millstone around his neck, not the other way around. ‘This should not be a close race,’ said Klein, the progressive organizer, on election day. “It makes me very nervous for November.” • Lots of not-very-encouraging detail on NY Democrats.
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Our Most Serious National Security Threat Isn’t Russian Nukes In Space, It’s Intelligence Agencies In Washington” [The Federalist]. “It was a busy day in Washington on Wednesday as the intelligence bureaucracy tried to foment a national security panic over Russian nukes in space in hopes of ramming through the Ukraine aid package and killing reforms designed to curb its power to spy on Americans…. What happened next is telling. Even though the House Republicans who were pushing for the [Section 702] FISA reforms [on ending Bush-era warrantless surveillance] appeared to be winning the debate, in the aftermath of the hysteria over Russia nukes in space, Speaker Johnson pulled the bill and canceled Congress for the rest of the week. It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to figure out what happened here. Our intelligence agencies don’t want lawmakers getting in the way of their plans.” • Nope. And sadly it takes a reactionary to say it.
“The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger” [Charlotte Cowles, New York Magazine (“The Cut”)]. The deck: ” I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam.” Cowles the Cut’s financial-advice. Skipping the horrid details to come to the part where Cowles muses on the debacle:
It was my brother, the lawyer, who pointed out that what I had experienced sounded a lot like a coerced confession. “I read enough transcripts of bad interrogations in law school to understand that anyone can be convinced that they have a very narrow set of terrible options,” he said. When I posed this theory to Saul Kassin, a psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies coerced confessions, he agreed. “If someone is trying to get you to be compliant, they do it incrementally, in a series of small steps that take you farther and farther from what you know to be true,” he said. “It’s not about breaking the will. They were altering the sense of reality.”
So, like liberal Democrat party politics?
* * * “Republican resolution shows intent to bypass Az voters in 2024 presidential election” [Tucson Sentinel]. “Rep. Rachel Jones, of Tucson, is the sponsor of House Concurrent Resolution 2055, a declaration saying that the state legislature already has the power — via the U.S. Constitution — to pre-appoint Arizona’s electors for the 2024 presidential election, to ensure that they would vote for former President Donald Trump, regardless of the results of the popular vote. The Legislature would then use the threat of ignoring the votes of millions of Arizonans to strong-arm Hobbs into signing an election reform bill that would eliminate early voting and allow only in-person voting and only on Election Day with no mail-in ballots, to be completely counted by hand. Hobbs would not have the power to veto the measure since the resolution does not have the power of law, but simply declares its backers’ intentions and what they already believe to be true, per federal law.
hile the Republican members of the House Municipal Oversight and Elections Committee almost always vote along party lines to approve proposed legislation from their own party, Jones’ resolution went too far, even for them.” • Indeed!
#COVID19
“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
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 (dashboard); 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, 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!
Look for the Helpers
Two, three, many Chicagos:
Cóvid-safer events in Chicago this week and next!
All of them will have at least one of our air purifiers. Some will also require masks!!
Cóvid safety is easy when we do it together 🩵🩵🩵 pic.twitter.com/cSVLvBf65j
— Clean Air Club (@Clean_Air_Club_) February 16, 2024
Vaccination and Vaccines
“Could a nasal vaccine mean you never get Covid again? How it works, where to get one and everything you need to know” [Daily Mail]. “Could a powdered vaccine you inhale finally offer the chance to stamp Covid out for good? The vaccine is designed to work in the respiratory tract, where the virus first gets into the body. According to a study, the vaccine offers almost instant protection against Covid – compared to conventional injected vaccines, which take up to 14 days to become fully effective. The inhaled vaccine blocked both infection with the virus and the chance of spreading it to others…. The vaccine is made of tiny spheres that contain the protein that is unique to the virus which causes Covid. It is inhaled into the nose and absorbed by blood vessels in the respiratory tract, where immune cells called T-cells and B-cells (which produce antibodies), attack it and then remember it…. ‘An injected vaccine given into the muscle, usually in the arm, will also produce T-cells and B-cells, but these will mainly circulate in the blood and organs,’ he adds. ‘Injected vaccines only provoke a tiny quantity in the nose and mouth, so they aren’t ideal guards for the point where the Covid virus gains entry. ‘It’s like putting security guards behind a wall – with a nasal vaccine you have those guards where you need them.’” The Covid situation in the UK must be really bad if the Daily Mail is writing about vaccines (although kudos to their scientific reporting, as usual). More: “We already have them. (but as it contains a live virus it is not suitable for older people because their immune systems are weaker). In terms of Covid, there are many nasal vaccines in development around the world, and at least two in the U.S. may be at a stage where they can be put before the regulators later this year. One of the contenders in the UK, called ViraVac, has been developed by Professor Munir and his team based on a vaccine originally sprayed around barns to halt a form of coronavirus in chickens. This had shown promise in animal studies but he says he’s has struggled to find the funding needed to move to the next stage of research since the World Health Organisation downgraded the status of Covid, saying in May last year that it was ‘no longer a global emergency’.” • Good job, WHO. (We ran the Nature original back in December; it’s paywalled, sadly.)
“New dry powder aerosol COVID-19 vaccine shows promise against multiple virus strains” [News Medical]. Mice, hamsters, and non-human primates. “Study findings revealed that this single-use nasal spray promotes the robust production of IgG and IgA antibodies and bolsters local T cell responses with the nasal tract and alveoli in murine and non-human primate models. The composition of the virus allows it to confer defense against both ancestral COVID-19 variants and the more recent Omicron strains. This novel vaccine could form the basis for a new generation of non-invasive vaccines against both COVID-19 and other respiratory tract infections…. Most encouragingly, this vaccine was found to be both single dose and multivalent – unlike conventional vaccines, the efficacy of R-CNP@M was stable against infection by conventional and Omicron COVID-19 lineages. Furthermore, unlike previous vaccines (including most aerosol-based ones) this vaccine requires administration only once.”
Immune Dysregulation
“Adelaide child reported with measles as cases emerge around Australia” [ABC Australia]. “Health authorities have warned travellers on a flight from Melbourne to Adelaide to be alert for symptoms after a toddler has contracted measles.” Oh good. More: “The highly contagious disease starts with fever, cough, runny nose, sore eyes, followed by a rash which starts on the head and spreads down the body.” • The rash begins three to five days after symptoms begin. But the symptoms are a lot like Covid, for which California, Oregon, and (possibly) CDC will force children back to school in one (1) day, thus guaranteeing transmission of an airborne virus with an R0 of 18, far greater than Covid.
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (Biobot) No backward revisions. The uptick is real (at least to Biobot). [2] (Biobot) Biobot data suggests a rise in the Northeast. MRWA data does not suggest that, as of February 8:
Here, FWIW, is Verily national data as of February 14:
And regional data for HHS Region, the Northeast:
Stats Watch
Housing: “United States Housing Starts” [Trading Economics]. “Housing starts in the US slumped 14.8% month-over-month to an annualized 1.331 million in January 2024, the lowest since August and missing market forecasts of 1.46 million. It is the biggest fall since April 2020, following a revised 3.3% increase to 1.562 million in December.”
Energy: “How much electricity does AI consume?” [The Verge]. “The challenge of making up-to-date estimates, says Sasha Luccioni, a researcher at French-American AI firm Hugging Face, is that companies have become more secretive as AI has become profitable. Go back just a few years and firms like OpenAI would publish details of their training regimes — what hardware and for how long. But the same information simply doesn’t exist for the latest models, like ChatGPT and GPT-4, says Luccioni. ‘With ChatGPT we don’t know how big it is, we don’t know how many parameters the underlying model has, we don’t know where it’s running … It could be three raccoons in a trench coat because you just don’t know what’s under the hood.’”
Tech: “Air Force OKs Autonomous Cargo Flights Across California After Successful Test” [Times of San Diego]. “The U.S. Air Force has authorized San Francisco-based Xwing to transport time-sensitive cargo across California on autonomous aircraft. The authorization follows a two-week demonstration totaling over 2,800 flight miles to civilian and military airports, including March Air Reserve Base, Vandenberg Space Force Base, Sacramento McClellan Airport, Meadows Field Airport, and Fresno Yosemite International Airport. The missions involved a self-flying single-engine Cessna 208B Grand Caravan that can carry 3,000 pounds of cargo.”
Public Relations: “Trading trust” [Seth’s Blog]. “Many companies, particularly tech ones, are deliberately trading trust for short-term profits. Amazon and many other companies went from investing heavily in being reliable, trustworthy and fair to taking persistent steps to trade these valuable assets for quarterly results. It’s worth being clear about this–they did this intentionally. They decided that the confidence consumers had placed in them wasn’t worth as much as the shortcuts they could take to increase profits instead. While the survey focuses on widely known, large institutions, the same could be said for the local pizzeria. Once you burn some trust, it’s almost impossible to earn it back. It took Harvard 400 years to become Harvard, Google about twenty to earn its position. This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for–to become the one that earns the benefit of the doubt. Being the low-trust option is hardly a spot worth fighting for.” • Enshittification viewed from another angle. Handy chart:
I love Twitter’s position at the absolute bottom, but I think Brooking’s is missing something: I don’t trust Twitter, the firm, in the slightest, no matter the owner. But I trust my curated list of follows very much (distinct from Facebook, whose feed is so [family blogged] to trust anyone or anything on it).
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 76 Extreme Greed (previous close: 76 Extreme Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 77 (Extreme Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 16 at 1:24:38 PM ET.
Zeitgeist Watch
Not a nice person at all:
NEW – Klaus Schwab Says ‘It Will Be a New World’ in Ten Years
“I think we have to be prepared for a world where we see a fusion of our physical, our digital, and our biological dimensions…So it will be a new world…In ten years probably it will be completely different from… pic.twitter.com/ZePU37XC1V
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) February 16, 2024
I don’t mean to sound dystopian, but doesn’t this imply a trade in body parts?
The real and the fake:
However, the version of the show hosted on the NFL’s official YouTube page has the audio cleaned up to remove Keys’s sour notes (link: https://t.co/IutG4l7Eka).
Bootleg clips containing the original, authentic audio are being scrubbed from YouTube at a breakneck pace. pic.twitter.com/F2Esr4ozmE
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) February 13, 2024
Class Warfare
“The identity of revenues and sources of revenue.” –The Bearded One
“It’s the Working Class, Stupid” [Harold Mayerson, Prospect]. Review of Judis and Teixiera, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes. “As Judis and Teixeira tell the story, two sets of culprits lie behind the Democrats’ economic and cultural missteps. They hold Wall Street and Silicon Valley responsible for the party’s failure to follow through on the populist economics that Carter, Clinton, and Obama at times rhetorically invoked. The true culprit for cultural radicalism, Judis and Teixeira argue, is the Democrats’ “shadow party”—advocacy groups, think tanks, foundations, and other donors as well as liberal media that have pushed the party toward positions that make no sense to working-class voters. Basically, Judis and Teixeira think that neoliberal economics and cultural radicalism make a deadly combination, appealing to an elite but not to the mass of voters. They want Democrats to move left on economics and toward the center on culture to recreate the politics that sustained the New Deal.” • Ah, the NGOs. Judis and Teixiera, then, are also attacking the PMC. Just like Rasmussen. How you can do analysis of the working class without making capital, named as such, part of the picture… It’s like doing astrology in a pre-Copernican universe.
News of the Wired
Like “bug”:
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