By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
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#COVID19
At reader request, I’ve added this daily chart from 91-DIVOC. The data is the Johns Hopkins CSSE data. Here is the site.
I feel I’m engaging in a macabre form of tape-watching. All the charts are becoming dull — approaching nominal, if you accept the “new normal” of cases, for example.
Well, scraping the bottom of those diminishing returns. Nevertheless…
UPDATE OH: “‘I’m still dreaming’: Toledoan wins second Vax-a-Million drawing” [Toledo Blade]. And buried deep in the story: “Governor DeWine credited the lottery enticement for a spike in new vaccinations after his initial announcement, but the numbers show the rate has again leveled off. Even with the fanfare surrounding the lottery, Ohio trails the national average of Americans rolling up their sleeves by a significant margin as well as neighbors Pennsylvania and Michigan. As the governor’s face mask, social distancing, and many other health orders ended as promised on Wednesday, Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, Ohio’s chief medical officer, felt the need — six months into vaccine availability — to again stress with reporters the safety of the vaccines.” • It’s as if elites would rather try manipulative gimmicks, instead of meeting people where they are and adjusting to their needs. As for example:
Today is the last day for the COVID-19 Mobile Vaccine Unit in CALAIS. Drop-in vaccination opportunities are available up until 2:00 PM today.
To learn more call 1-888-445-4111 or visit https://t.co/4x972ksgni. #VaccinateMe pic.twitter.com/GYEMawp7WZ— Maine CDC (@MEPublicHealth) June 3, 2021
You’d think mobile vaccine units would be getting some press play, as opposed to lotteries…
UPDATE “J&J vaccine drive stalls out in U.S after safety pause” [Reuters]. “Safety concerns about Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine along with overall flagging demand for vaccinations have slowed its U.S. rollout to a crawl, leaving close to half of the 21 million doses produced for the United States sitting unused.” • Eesh.
Case count by United States regions:
Continued good news, though perhaps the decrease is slowing a little?
UPDATE “Covid cases in U.S. fall to levels not seen since March 2020” [NBC News]. “On Wednesday, the seven-day average was 16,860, the lowest since March 29, 2020…. The winter surge has now receded, and as the calendar turns to June, the country is once again reopening. But the pandemic has changed drastically in the intervening 12 months. Thanks to vaccinations, experts say, the U.S. is unlikely to see a summer surge on a scale similar to last year…. .The big test will come in the fall, when the weather cools and people start to gather indoors, said Dr. Chris Beyrer, a professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The virus [is airborne and –ls] spreads much more easily in indoor, poorly ventilated spaces. Still, Hanage noted, any fall or winter uptick won’t be like the surge the nation saw last winter, because the vaccines have proven to be very effective in preventing severe disease. That means an increase in cases won’t necessarily lead to a large increase in hospitalizations seen in previous surges, he said.”
Big states (New York, Florida, Texas, California):
Continued good news.
Continued good news.
Hospitalization (CDC):
Continued good news.
Deaths (Our World in Data):
Continued good news.
Covid cases worldwide:
India, assuming one trusts the numbers, falls well below Latin America. Given that Miami is the capital of Latin America, that’s a region worth watching.
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Politics
“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51
“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune
“They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” –Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord
Biden Administration
Molasses for brains:
The Biden WH is drifting https://t.co/L39z14onEG
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) June 6, 2021
UPDATE “Kamala Harris Can’t Win” [Frank Bruni, New York Times]. “‘She’s very aware that her being in this position is a threat to many people,’ Valerie Jarrett, who was a senior adviser to Obama during his presidency, told me. ‘They’re terrified of seeing a woman of color in this kind of position of authority and responsibility. But with every position she’s ever had in her career in public service, she’s dealt with the same reaction. So she’s used to this, and part of what will make her successful is her ability to ignore the noise.’” • Gad. Harris couldn’t even win her home state (although she did win the Hamptons). That should terrify Democrats.
Republican Funhouse
“How Q And Trump Deadenders Became Obsessed With Myanmar” [Talking Points Memo]. “The Myanmar coup plotters used claims of voter fraud during their own November 2020 presidential election as a justification for taking power. The Myanmar military’s claims were broad, with one general alleging that 8 million fake votes had been counted. International observers at the election say that there were no major irregularities. When the Myanmar coup first took place on Feb. 1, Q supporters reacted with recognition. ‘QAnon is jealous of Myanmar’s military coup,’ ran one Feb. 4 headline in Vice.” • So I’m not the only one who views Myanmar as a harbinger, though needless to say I’m not in favor of the Tatmadaw’s coup.
Democrats en Deshabille
“The Current Democratic Party Is Unable to Meet the Demands of the Joe Crow Era” [Mike the Mad Biologist]. “To follow up on yesterday’s post about Democratic Senator Joe Manchin’s decision to tank Senate bill S1, making it highly unlikely Democrats will hold either the House or the Senate in 2022, there is one way to still win elections. That is to massively increase voter turnout through organizing. The problem is that the consultants picked by the Democratic Party leadership–and which are forced on Democratic candidates–have no incentive to do this. They don’t want to give ‘their money’ to a bunch of local and state organizers, who are typically unaffiliated with specific candidates or even the Democratic Party. That’s not the business model–the business model is running TV ads (sometimes online ads too) and getting a cut of the expenditure. Meanwhile the people on the ground who bang on doors are shortchanged.”
“Hunter Biden’s laptop keeps damning Joe, but most media just ignore it” [New York Post]. “To put some face-saving cover on the event in the private ‘Garden Room’ at Café Milano, a posh Georgetown eatery (“Where the world’s most powerful people go,” run its promos), Hunter billed it as ‘ostensibly to discuss food security,’ as he emailed one guest, and invited several officials from the World Food Program. But the beards were outnumbered by the likes of corrupt former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov (hubby of Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, who’d paid one of Hunter’s firms $3.5 million the year before), Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev, Karim Massimov, a former prime minister of Kazakhstan, and Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. The photo of the then-veep and Hunter smiling with the two Kazakhs, clearly shot at Café Milano, isn’t the only proof Joe actually attended the dinner: Pozharskyi emailed Hunter the next day, “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. … It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.” So much for any claim that Joe never met with Burisma officials even as he was Team Obama’s point man on Ukraine, a role he used to demand the ouster of a prosecutor who was looking into the firm.” • I can’t speak to the detail on this. But the photos alone… Imagine if this had been Jared Kushner. We’d still be reading the headlines. Maddow would be going nuts. And so on.
2022
“Ex-Rep Alan Grayson files paperwork to challenge Marco Rubio in 2022” [Raw Story]. • Good!
Obama Legacy
“Obama: Presidential center will promote Chicago’s South side” [Associated Press]. “Barack Obama continued a push to build support for his presidential center on Chicago’s lakefront on Friday, urging business leaders in the city to get involved with the project. The former president announced his choice of Jackson Park on the city’s South Side in 2016 but construction for the $500 million project had been delayed because of a federal review needed in the historic parkland. The review started in 2017 and recently concluded. Chicago officials announced in April that preliminary work at the property was underway, even as activists filed another lawsuit seeking to force its relocation to protect the surrounding environment.” • A stately pleasure dome…
Stats Watch
There are no official statistics of note today.
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Banking: “Goldman Sachs Teams With Visa To Streamline Cross Border Payments For Clients” [PYMNTS.COM]. “A recent PYMNTS/Visa study shows that, on average, 26 percent of a company’s revenue now comes from cross-border buyers; the larger the company, the larger the percentage of sales from outside their domestic market. With those sales also comes the delay in accessing those funds. On average, according to the same study, companies wait as much as a third longer for cross-border payments to post to their accounts. Against that backdrop, Goldman Sachs and Visa announced a strategic partnership Monday (June 7) that will simplify cross-border payments flows for Goldman’s transaction banking clients.”
The Bezzle: “Why Your Uber Ride Is Suddenly Costing a Fortune” [New York Magazine]. “Ride-hailing prices are up — way up, by 50 percent or more over pre-pandemic rates. The shocking incongruity of Uber’s pricing in particular went viral when Sunny Madra, vice-president of Ford’s accelerator program, posted screenshots of a Wednesday morning ride from midtown Manhattan to JFK Airport that cost $248.90 — about as much as his flight to San Francisco. But why now?…. Much like the supply-chain issues that are plaguing virtually every industry now, Uber and Lyft are dealing with a moment of exceptionally high demand, says Harry Campbell, who reports on the industry at the Rideshare Guy…. The labor shortage is not unique to ride-hailing, but the situation is particularly dire right now at Uber and Lyft, where morale among its gig workers is low.” • I can’t imagine why.
The Bezzle:
BREAKING: Donald Trump tells @FoxBusiness, “Bitcoin is a scam… I don’t like it. Seems like another currency competing against the dollar.”
— Lydia Moynihan (@LJMoynihan) June 7, 2021
Where’s the lie?
Tech: “An Attractive Cheap Organic Material for New Generation of Batteries” [SciTechDaily]. “While the modern world relies on energy storage devices more and more heavily, it is becoming increasingly important to implement sustainable battery technologies that are friendlier to the environment, are easy to dispose, rely on abundant elements only, and are cheap. Organic batteries are desirable candidates for such purposes. However, organic cathode materials that store a lot of energy per mass unit can be charged quickly, are durable, and can be easily produced on a large scale at the same time, remain underdeveloped. To address this problem, researchers from Skoltech proposed a simple….” • They lost me there. Perhaps chemists in the readership can expand on this,
Travel: “Royal Caribbean changes policy to make vaccines optional for cruise ship passengers” [The Hill]. “Royal Caribbean International on Friday announced a change in its policy, saying vaccinations against the coronavirus will be optional for cruise ship passengers. ‘Guests are strongly recommended to set sail fully vaccinated, if they are eligible. Those who are unvaccinated or unable to verify vaccination will be required to undergo testing and follow other protocols, which will be announced at a later date,’ the company said in its announcement. The move comes after Florida passed a law that will fine companies $5,000 each time they ask customers if they are vaccinated against the coronavirus, the Miami Herald reported.” • Another natural experiment…
The Economy: “Plywood boards, fencing are still protecting downtown Portland property. Will they harm the area’s rebound?” [The Oregonian]. “[V]irtually every block in the heart of the city continues to have boarded-up buildings and windows, a jarring juxtaposition to the budding vibrancy…. As city officials seek to appease retailers and employers and encourage residents to work, shop, dine and attend cultural events downtown, the patchwork of boards and barriers remains an intractable hurdle.
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Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 48 Neutral (previous close: 48 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 38 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jun 7 at 12:16pm.
Rapture Index: Closes down one on global turmoil. “The lack of activity has downgraded this category.” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 186 (Remember that bringing on the rapture is a good thing, so high is better.)
The Biosphere
“Climate tipping points could topple like dominoes, warn scientists” [Guardian]. “The new research examined the interactions between ice sheets in West Antarctica, Greenland, the warm Atlantic Gulf Stream and the Amazon rainforest. The scientists carried out 3m computer simulations and found domino effects in a third of them, even when temperature rises were below 2C, the upper limit of the Paris agreement. The study showed that the interactions between these climate systems can lower the critical temperature thresholds at which each tipping point is passed. It found that ice sheets are potential starting points for tipping cascades, with the Atlantic currents acting as a transmitter and eventually affecting the Amazon. ‘We provide a risk analysis, not a prediction, but our findings still raise concern,’ said Prof Ricarda Winkelmann, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany. ‘[Our findings] might mean we have less time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and still prevent tipping processes.’”
“Opponents take stand against Enbridge Line 3” [Indian Country Today]. “The Mississippi River, or Great River in the Ojibwe language, is barely three feet in width near its headwaters in northern Minnesota. Tender and vulnerable, it meanders across the landscape with no hint at its greatness farther south. It’s here near the river’s headwaters that Enbridge is completing construction on the Line 3 pipeline and its numerous crossings under the river. And it’s here that hundreds of water protectors and supporters are making a stand Monday opposing the project. Numerous environmental, faith and Indigenous groups organized the Treaty People Gathering this weekend, describing it as the largest act of resistance so far to the pipeline. Attendees are encouraged to ‘put their bodies on the line to stop construction and tell the world that the days of tar sands are over,’ according to the Treaty People Gathering website,” • Leave it in the ground!
“Airborne transmission pathway for coastal water pollution” [Environmental Science]. Yikes:
Each year, over one hundred million people become ill and tens of thousands die from exposure to viruses and bacteria from sewage transported to the ocean by rivers, estuaries, stormwater, and other coastal discharges. Water activities and seafood consumption have been emphasized as the major exposure pathways to coastal water pollution. In contrast, relatively little is known about the potential for airborne exposure to pollutants and pathogens from contaminated seawater. The Cross Surfzone/Inner-shelf Dye Exchange (CSIDE) study was a large-scale experiment designed to investigate the transport pathways of water pollution along the coast by releasing dye into the surfzone in Imperial Beach, CA. Additionally, we leveraged this ocean-focused study to investigate potential airborne transmission of coastal water pollution by collecting complementary air samples along the coast and inland. Aerial measurements tracked sea surface dye concentrations along 5+ km of coast at 2 m × 2 m resolution. Dye was detected in the air over land for the first 2 days during two of the three dye releases, as far as 668 m inland and 720 m downwind of the ocean. These coordinated water/air measurements, comparing dye concentrations in the air and upwind source waters, provide insights into the factors that lead to the water-to-air transfer of pollutants. These findings show that coastal water pollution can reach people through an airborne pathway and this needs to be taken into account when assessing the full impact of coastal ocean pollution on public health.
“A hallucinogenic toad in peril” [High Country News]. “Late on a Thursday evening in July 2018, three intruders were caught on a wildlife camera at the Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area, a park north of Phoenix. Holding flashlights, they scoured a Mexican lily-filled pond near a popular hiking trail, on the hunt for Sonoran Desert toads. One girl squealed as she held up a fat one — both hands wrapped around its belly — and dropped it into a plastic bag. Later, a young man wearing a tattered cowboy hat and a tank top came into view, his face and hand looming large in the camera frame as he clenched a grocery bag. A jumble of legs pressed frantically into the thin plastic, captive amphibians trying to escape their new prison. “That is like the last thing I expected to see,” Kevin Smith, Spur Cross Ranch’s sole park ranger, said. He estimates, from the footage, that the thieves grabbed at least a dozen toads. Though the recordings — and the story’s peculiar nature —made local and national news, briefly causing a stir, the culprits were never caught. What happened to the creatures isn’t hard to guess, however: In recent years, psychedelic enthusiasts have been rounding up Sonoran Desert toads in order to obtain their secretions, which contain a powerful hallucinogenic substance called 5-MeO-DMT.” • Jerks.
“Mass Murder in the Late Neolithic” [Patrick Wyman, Perspectives]. “Whoever the killers were, they weren’t trying to frighten or run off their adversaries. Viewed in cross-cultural perspective, raiders often capture children and women, taking them as slaves. That wasn’t the case here; the attackers were trying to exterminate their adversaries. Were they rivals for resources? Was there a cultural barrier or set of taboos marking the two groups off from one another? What process of dehumanization was necessary to make this act possible? We’ll never know the answers. The dead have their story to tell, but on these questions, they remain silent.” • Genesis 4:8….
Health Care
UPDATE “A Truly Revolting Treatment Is Having a Renaissance” [The Atlantic]. “By 2008, maggot therapy was being administered about 50,000 times annually worldwide, as a growing body of research continued to demonstrate why the stomach-turning approach was worth tolerating. In a three-year randomized clinical trial, for example, University of York scientists found that larvae debrided leg ulcers significantly faster than standard wound-healing gels did. In another study of foot-ulcer treatments, researchers at Trafford College, near Manchester, concluded that maggot therapy was significantly better than gels at reducing the area of a wound. Individual case studies have also described the effectiveness of maggot therapy for severe electrical burns or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections. A 2012 study conducted at two French hospitals found that maggots could outperform scalpels when it came to quickly clearing dead tissue from nonhealing wounds. During the COVID-19 pandemic, University of Southern California surgeons demonstrated that maggot therapy could even be conducted via telemedicine.”
“IDseq—An open source cloud-based pipeline and analysis service for metagenomic pathogen detection and monitoring” [Giga Science]. “Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) has enabled the rapid, unbiased detection and identification of microbes without pathogen-specific reagents, culturing, or a priori knowledge of the microbial landscape. mNGS data analysis requires a series of computationally intensive processing steps to accurately determine the microbial composition of a sample…. We present IDseq, an open source cloud-based metagenomics pipeline and service for global pathogen detection and monitoring (https://idseq.net)…. IDseq was designed with the specific intent of detecting novel pathogens…. The IDseq Portal reduces the barrier to entry for mNGS data analysis and enables bench scientists, clinicians, and bioinformaticians to gain insight from mNGS datasets for both known and novel pathogens.” • Sounds like if you are the kind of person who needs to know about this, you really need to know about this (modulo, well, does it work…).
Our Famously Free Press
“Cable News Network Viewership Continued To Drop In April Vs. 2020; Fox News Tops Primetime And Total Day” [Deadline]. “Fox News averaged 2.24 million viewers in primetime, down 39% from a year earlier, while MSNBC had 1.58 million, down 22%, and CNN was at 1.03 million, down 47%. In the 25-54 demo, Fox News topped with 368,000, down 45%, compared to 276,000 for CNN, down 52%, and 227,000 for MSNBC, a drop of 32%.” • They all need Trump back in the game.
“Editor’s Note: Contributors Wanted” [Matt Taibbi, TK News (maryann)]. “I would like this site to be a place where subscribers can get reporting and analysis they can’t get from mainstream commercial press sources. Therefore, I’d be especially interested in [outside contributors who have] experience in a certain field and is frustrated by how their sphere is covered. It could be any area: medicine, law, policing, education, real estate, lobbying, finance, lion-taming, dentistry, whatever… The kicker is that contributors must also have a sense of style or an innovative presentation. In an effort to avoid inundating subscribers with material, contributions have to be unique/unusual and in the spirit of the site…. Anything that’s good or funny or informative will be considered, and we don’t discriminate against the eccentric.” •
Zeitgeist Watch
Trainspotting: The Midwest Sequel
old couple waiting to see a train pic.twitter.com/skI40aZQgi
— Midwest Modern (@JoshLipnik) June 5, 2021
“Match CEO: ‘We’re going to see the biggest cuffing season ever’” [Yahoo Finance]. “Americans are emerging from the pandemic eager to reconnect with friends and family — and strangers. That last part is great news for dating apps. And while the summer is generally a time for casual dating, Match (MTCH) CEO Hesam Hosseini thinks the fall of 2021 looks to be particularly auspicious for more serious relationships to blossom. ‘Our role is really to help you find the one, find a meaningful connection,’ Hosseini said in an interview with Yahoo Finance (video above). ‘We are actually doubling down on that. You know, this summer is a mixed bag. We actually predict that come the fall we’re going to see the biggest cuffing season ever.’” And because you are wondering, just as I was wondering: “‘Cuffing season’— defined as the time of year when ‘single people begin looking for short term partnerships to pass the colder months of the year’ — was challenged by society largely shuttering in 2020, and Match sees pent up demand for people looking to make deeper connections.” • So, “cuffing season” is “deeper connections.” To be fair, “deeper connections” aren’t that easy, and economics make them even harder for persons who date.
Under the Influence
“The Anxiety of Influencers” [Harpers]. “Also known as content houses or TikTok mansions, collab houses are grotesquely lavish abodes where teens and early twentysomethings live and work together, trying to achieve viral fame on a variety of media platforms. Sometime last spring, when most of us were making bread or watching videos of singing Italians, the houses began to proliferate in impressive if not mind-boggling numbers, to the point where it became difficult for a casual observer even to keep track of them. There was Hype House and Drip House and a house called Girls in the Valley. There was FaZe House (for gamers) and Alt Haus (for outcasts) and one called Byte House, the first of its kind in the U.K. Perhaps the most recognizable was the Sway House, tenanted by a cohort of shaggy-haired bros whose content consisted mostly of lifting weights and pretending to have sex with their smartphone cameras. Essentially, they were the Brat Pack of Gen Z, replete with bad-boy antics and dangling, cross-bearing earrings. For the past twenty-four hours, I’ve been dwelling among the influencers at Clubhouse FTB, enduring bouts of dick jokes and long glugs of White Claw, the sort of chaffing male camaraderie you’re apt to find in frat houses or hunting lodges. Among the various House Rules, which are enumerated on a whiteboard in the dining room of this mansion, are boldfaced injunctions to wake up by 10 am, to refrain from drinking Sunday through Thursday, to hold house meetings every morning at 11:30, and to ‘finish brand deliverables before inviting guests.’ Unlike some other houses, the Clubhouse isn’t owned and operated by the influencers themselves but is overseen by outside investors. In exchange for posting three to five videos per week to the Clubhouse social-media accounts, the boys receive free room and board, plus whatever brand deals they can get based upon their ‘relevance.’ ‘When coronavirus hit,’ Baron Scho tells me during a break in the action, ‘I was like, all right, I’m gonna get TikTok famous.’” • America is back!
“The Emerging Beef Between the Texas Bee Lady and the Beekeeping Critic Who Argues She’s an Influencer Hoax” [Jexebel]. “The online beekeeping community is buzzing over a much-beloved beekeeper, Erika Thompson (@texasbeeworks, pictured above), who was accused of staging her bee rescue missions in favor of a more Instagram-friendly aesthetic. Fellow beekeeper Friday Chamberlain (@lahoneybeerescue) posted a video accusing Thompson of smearing the craft by misrepresenting the work of bee swarm removal, thus staining the good name of women beekeepers. Thompson, for the most part, appears to be unscathed by the accusation and is still ‘following the bees.’ The video, which has been removed from TikTok after Thompson’s fans reported it, is one of the best takedowns of the wholesome beekeeping profession I have ever seen, as it is the only one I have ever seen…. Chamberlain, seen in the video above, wastes no time laying into Thompson with the real nitty-gritty shit that internet rivalries are made of: hair and clothes. Chamberlain argues that Thompson’s videos, which show her approaching swarms of bees dressed in a standard all-black mall walking outfit and her hair flowing free, are pretty to look at but ultimately unsafe. Thompson’s videos, which show her removing different sized swarms from various locations, which is her full-time job, come off as staged bee-fluencer propaganda, because the audience doesn’t see protective gear and the correct bee-saving hairstyle, key components of the craft.” • No protective gear? Really?
Guillotine Watch
“New Rolls-Royce Boat Tail Is a Coachbuilt Cruiser With a High-Tech Picnic Basket in the Trunk” [The Drive]. “Keeping with the theme of “cartoonishly cliche rich person shit,” the Boat Tail also comes with two dashboard timepieces—one for her, one for him—crafted by Bovet 1822 (Google it, you pleb) that can be taken out and worn as watches. Rolls-Royce says the clients are also really big into collecting pens because of course they are and have therefore placed a “particularly cherished” Montblanc pen inside a hand-crafted, aluminum and leather case inside this car’s glove box…. More notable than the Boat Tail itself perhaps, Rolls-Royce is also announcing that its Coachbuild program will become a permanent offering for the company going forward, meaning more bespoke and unnecessary creations like this one are very likely in the pipeline. The first tech bro to commission a Dogecoin-themed Rolls-Royce or anyone with enough gall to ask for a Sea-Doo-branded version of the Boat Tail complete with a chilled two-four of PBR in the back receives all of my admiration and respect.
“Who is Mark Bezos? Brother of Jeff Bezos to join Amazon founder on Blue Origin trip to space” {USA Today]. • Revised headline: “Lucky Sperm Club Winner Blasts Off!” With deck: “They sent one billionaire into space. Why can’t they send all of them?”
Class Warfare
“California moves to make abortion cheaper, as other states work to restrict it” [Los Angeles Times]. “State lawmakers are debating a bill to eliminate out-of-pocket expenses such as co-pays and payments toward deductibles for abortions and related services, including counseling.” • But eliminate co-pays and deductibles universal health care? Lol, no.
News of the Wired
“The real threat to the empire of English” [Janan Ganesh, Financial Times]. “At the time of writing, I have no clear idea what “gaslighting” means. Nor ‘“benching”, “mirroring”, “sealioning” or — an asset-management boutique? — ‘grey rock’. ‘Performative’, I do, but the world seemed to live without the word, the use of which has itself become performative, until five minutes ago. None of this even gets into the Anthony Burgess-grade neologisms of identity politics. And not to ‘both-sides’ this — why is it always a verb? — but conservatives are hardly above an in-phrase or two. What did ‘virtue-signalling’ add to ‘sanctimony’? Who didn’t prefer ‘snowflake’ in the hands of a poet like Longfellow? But I wonder if English has ever been as restlessly protean as it is now. If the changes stayed at the level of slang or subculture, they would be of merely academic interest. What we have instead is constant seepage into the mainstream.” • I’m a bit of a fuddy-duddy, Colonel Blimpish type myself, but I have to ask: Is this article cheugy?
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Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi 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. Today’s plant (TH):
TH writes: “This one is from a previous April.”
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