By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Pampas Meadowlark. Estancia La Josefina – Lote 18. Saavedra, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Sounds like the birder is stepping through a stream on rocks?!
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) The Bragg trial winds down.
(2) Imperceptible skin sensors.
(3) Hokusai’s Great Wave.
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 half a year to go!
Not a good week for Team Trump, with most of the Swing States (more here) Brownian-motioning themselves toward Biden. Not, however, Michigan, to which Trump paid a visit, nor crucial Pennsylvania. Of course, it goes without saying that these are all state polls, therefore bad, and most of the results are within the margin of error. Now, if either candidate starts breaking away in points, instead of tenths of a point…. NOTE I changed the notation: Up and down arrows for increases or decreases over last week, circles for no change. Red = Trump. Blue would be Biden if he were leading anywhere, but he isn’t.
* * * Lambert here: Patient readers, I promised to pull on my yellow waders and post on Merchan’s instructions to the jury, but unfortunately neither the transcript where Merchan and the lawyers hashed everything out, nor the instructions themselves, are online yet, and won’t be before Tuesday, when closing arguments begin, so I don’t have the materials I need. I may have to devote a whole Water Cooler to it. So we’ll see.
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Will the Jury Convict Trump? Here Are the Clues” (Politico). The bottom line: “Is Bragg going to convince a jury? As we approach closing arguments on Tuesday, here’s what we can say: It appears that the odds of Trump being convicted are fairly good — but not overwhelming. Perhaps slightly more likely than not. The likelihood of an acquittal, which would require all 12 jurors to unanimously conclude that Trump is not guilty, appears slim at best. Yet there is a very real chance that one or more jurors will refuse to convict — most likely because they are unwilling to fully credit the testimony of Michael Cohen — and that the jury will hang, resulting in a mistrial and a de facto victory for Trump.” • From my reading of the coverage, this piece is a reasonably fair-minded summary (which is another way of saying that in my view it’s far too respectful of the prosecution’s case, and gives Merchan a free pass on conflict). But it’s well worth a read, and I agree with its conclusion on the centrality of the closing arguments. However, I think, regardless of the outcome, that this particular piece of lawfare may blow back. If Trump is convicted and faces jail time, Trump looks like a martyr, and if they actually put him in a cell, I think he’d win by five points at least. If Trump gets off lightly — if the jury could do something in a criminal case like find on the business records misdemeanors and then fine him one dollar — then the political nature of the case becomes crystal clear, and Trump wins that way, too. Somewhere in the middle, most likely the case isn’t resolved until after the election, as Trump appeals. Of course, the Democrats in essence waged a war of attrition on the Trump campaign, both eating up money in fees, and more importantly consuming the campaign’s most valluable resource: The candidate’s time. In that respect, the Democrats lawfare has been a success. As far as the verdict goes, we would need to know how pervasive TDS is on the jury to hazard a guess. All that said, we often raise questions about the quality of Trump’s lawyering, so it’s worth noting that this case was fought to a draw in the press, and all the other cases have slipped off the campaign calendar, so I think Trump’s legal team can be said to have done well.
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Most believe Trump probably guilty of crime as his NYC trial comes to an end, CBS News poll finds” (CBS). “The public is more split on what they think the jury will decide, with about half expecting jurors to find Trump guilty and half saying the opposite. And views on both sides are far from certain. For example, far more say jurors will ‘probably’ convict Trump than ‘definitely’ convict him…. If people believe Trump’s guilty, they tend to believe the jury will convict him. And vice versa for those who believe he isn’t guilty of a crime. But about a third in each group expect the jury to decide the opposite of what they themselves believe. Overall, about three quarters of Americans report having heard or read at least some about the trial. And those who say they have heard ‘a lot’ about it are the most polarized in their views — they are likelier to identify as strong partisans and express more confidence in Trump’s guilt or innocence, potentially blunting the impact of a verdict on the public’s views.” • IOW, the verdict, whatever it may be, is already priced in? Anyhow, the nice thing about the Prosecution’s Heisenbergian theory of Trump’s object offense is that all you have to believe is that Trump is guilty of something, no matter what it might be….
* * * Trump (R) (Smith/Cannon): “Revelation of secret Obama-era program casts doubt on stated reason for Trump Mar-a-Lago raid” (FOX). “A purportedly never-before-seen Department of Defense memo from the Obama era appears to indicate the federal government already may have had original copies of the documents seized at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida in 2022, raising serious questions about the pretext for the raid, Fox News Digital has exclusively learned. America First Legal (AFL), a conservative legal group, released Thursday what it says is a newly unearthed memo from the Obama administration Department of Defense ‘confirming the government may have already had originals of the alleged classified documents involved in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s sham prosecution against President Trump.’ The document, titled Memorandum of Understanding Entered into by Presidential Information Technology Community Entities, is from 2015, and followed an October 2014 Russian breach of the Executive Office of the President’s network. Then-President Barack Obama took executive action to create the Presidential Information Technology Community (PITC) to better protect the executive branch from such attacks, according to AFL. The PITC, which includes representatives from federal agencies such as the Department of Defense and Homeland Security, effectively established that the president controls information he receives through the PITC network…. The memo’s disclosure on Thursday would not, by itself, absolve Trump of any potential wrongdoing in the case; however, it appears to challenge the initial justification for the raid…. (J)ust weeks after Trump left office in 2021, the White House Office of Records Management under the Biden administration began working with NARA “on exaggerated claims related to records handling under the Presidential Records Act,” Trump’s attorney wrote in a court filing to compel discovery…. The Archives’ insistence that Trump turn over the records appeared to be due, at least in part, to NARA’s mission to ‘properly’ preserve ‘a complete set of Presidential records,’ as outlined in a Feb. 7, 2022 statement. But if the government already had access to the documents through the Obama-era program, the documents in question would ostensibly already be preserved.” • Hmm.
* * * Trump (R): “The Shaky Foundation of Trump’s Lead: Disengaged Voters” (New York Times). “The polls have shown Donald J. Trump with an edge for eight straight months, but there’s one big flashing warning sign suggesting that his advantage might not be quite as stable as it looks. That warning sign: His narrow lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote. To an extent that hasn’t been true in New York Times/Siena College polling in the last eight years, disengaged voters are driving the overall polling results and the story line about the election. President Biden has actually led the last three Times/Siena national polls among those who voted in the 2020 election, even as he has trailed among registered voters overall. And looking back over the last few years, almost all of Mr. Trump’s gains have come from these less engaged voters.”
Trump (R): “Trump campaign accuses Secret Service of ‘critical flaw’ in RNC convention planning” (ABC). “The Trump campaign on Thursday fired off a letter to U.S. Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle, demanding she fix a “critical flaw” in the security perimeter of this summer’s Republican National Convention, claiming that attendees’ safety is at risk as protesters plan to descend on the area. The convention, slated for July 15-18 in Milwaukee, includes a perimeter that encompasses a nearby park, Pere Marquette. As of now, pedestrians would have to walk through Pere Marquette, which is owned by the city, to reach the facilities. According to a person familiar with the security plan, the park serves as a natural congregation point and there’s a heightened concern that attendees’ safety may be at risk if the park is not secured.” • I would imagine both Kennedy and Trump could go after the Secret Service, if they were ever all three on the stage togther.
* * * Biden (D): “Top Biden campaign official held Zoom call with Haley supporters hours after she endorsed Trump” (Politico). “A top official with Joe Biden’s presidential campaign held a call with Nikki Haley supporters on Wednesday, just hours after the former U.N. ambassador announced that she would be voting for Donald Trump. The Zoom meeting involved Biden’s deputy political director Juan Peñalosa and members of the Haley Voters Working Group, a nonprofit composed of former Haley supporters. And though it had been scheduled prior to Haley’s announcement, the message conveyed didn’t change. Peñalosa stressed that the campaign would continue to quietly reach out to current and former Republican elected officials who don’t support Trump. The goal wouldn’t just be to win their votes or campaign donations but to potentially offer endorsements of Biden as well.” • Democrats believing that to win, all they have to do is turn into Republicans. It never changes.
* * * OH: “Gov. Mike DeWine calls special legislative session to address Biden ballot issue” (Cleveland.com). “Gov. Mike DeWine has taken the rare step of calling a special legislative session, in effect summoning the General Assembly to make sure that President Joe Biden qualifies for the ballot this November…. ‘Ohio is running out of time to get Joe Biden, the sitting president of the United States on the ballot this fall. Failing to do so is simply not acceptable. This is ridiculous. This is an absurd situation,’ DeWine said.” • I don’t think much of DeWine, but this speaks well of him.
Democrats en Déshabillé
“Democratic operative Steve Kramer indicted over Biden robocalls” (Axios). “Steve Kramer, a longtime Democratic political operative, was indicted over AI-generated robocalls that impersonated President Biden’s voice to discourage voters in New Hampshire, the state’s Attorney General announced Thursday. Kramer, a former political consultant for Biden’s long-shot Democratic primary challenger Rep. Dean Phillips (Minn.), was charged with 13 felony counts of voter suppression and 13 misdemeanor counts of impersonation of a candidate.” • Whoops. Phillips never did go anywhere, did he? And now he’s forgotten….
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 (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!
Transmission: H5N1
“Bird Flu Is More Widespread Among Dairy Cows, Sewage Tests Suggest” (Bloomberg). “Academic and industry-run labs have been leading the way toward more nuanced and complete information about the H5N1 virus’s range by analyzing wastewater. They found bird flu in sewage samples collected before the virus had been identified in US cows. They’re seeing signs in cities that are far from infected cattle herds. And they’re already giving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention better information about where to focus its efforts.” That’s good of them, and I’m sure CDC won’t let their efforts go to waste. More: “As farmers resist testing, the US needs to expand its monitoring of sewage, particularly in rural areas around farms where the pathogen may be spreading, said Paul Friedrichs, director of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy. ‘We’re going to need to do more work as a nation on how do we better structure wastewater surveillance in areas that don’t have or aren’t on a municipal wastewater system,’ Friedrichs, a retired major general and joint staff surgeon at the Pentagon, said in an interview. ‘That’s the gap we’re going to have to figure out how to bridge.’” • The headline writes itself: “Weak CDC allowed dairy farmers to infect the nation for profit.” Because that really is what’s going on. (To be fair, dairy farmers can’t afford to cull their hears in the same way chicken CAFOs can. Maybe we could divert the money for one F-35 to them. I’m sure that would be ample, and shouldn’t preventing a pandemic be some sort of priority? Besides not forcing a retired major general to wring his hands and dither?
Sequelae: Covid
“The global clinical studies of long COVID” (International Journal of Infectious Diseases). “Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the trend of global Long COVID clinical studies and to determine the distribution of outcomes in these trials…. Despite the increasing trend of registered long COVID trials worldwide, therapeutic effects in most of the published trials were not confirmative, which partly explains inexistence of evidence-based long COVID treatment recommended by current guidelines. Future studies should be designed and registered to address long COVID-related sleep disorders which were seldomly included in registered clinical studies but worth solving. Moreover, interventions aimed at treating the underlying pathophysiology of long COVID are also necessary but currently lacking.” • The bios of the authors look good, but there are some sentences that don’t seem to be quite English, so WTF?
Lambert here: Patient readers, I’m going to have to rethink this beautifully formatted table. Biobot data is gone, CDC variant data functions, ER visits are dead, CDC stopped mandatory hospital data collection, New York Times death data has stopped. (Note that the two metrics the hospital-centric CDC cared about, hospitalization and deaths, have both gone dark). Ideally I would replace hospitalization and death data, but I’m not sure how. I might also expand the wastewater section to include (yech) Verily data, H5N1 if I can get it. Suggestions and sources welcome. UPDATE I replaced the Times death data with CDC data. Amusingly, the URL doesn’t include parameters to construct the tables; one must reconstruct then manually each time. Caltrops abound.
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) Dead.
(2) (Biobot) Dead.
(3) (CDC Variants) FWIW, given that the model completely missed KP.2.
(4) (ER) CDC seems to have killed this off, since the link is broken, I think in favor of this thing. I will try to confirm. UPDATE Yes, leave it to CDC to kill a page, and then announce it was archived a day later. And heaven forfend CDC should explain where to go to get equivalent data, if any. I liked the ER data, because it seemed really hard to game.
(5) (Hospitalization: NY) Slightly, but distinctly up. The New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and around the country through air travel). So my natural inclination is to see how wastewater at JFK and EWR is doing. CDC, before it decided to butcher wastewater visualization, provided data down to the sewage treatment plant level, so I could check the Brooklyn plant for JFK (and also the Brooklyn plant for LGA). Well, that’s no longer possible, but the Verily (vomits quietly) wastewater site — Biobot being kaput — provides data on EWR. Here it is:
So, New York City Hospitalization up, Covid from air travel up. Make of that what you will. Covid is also up in Singapore and France, you will recall.
(6) (Hospitalization: CDC) Still down. “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates weekly for the previous MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Department Visits, Test Positivity) and weekly the following Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”.
(7) (Walgreens) Slight uptick.
(8) (Cleveland) Leveling out.
(9) (Travelers: Posivitity) Up and down.
(10) (Travelers: Variants) KP.2 enters the chat, as does B.1.1.529 (with backward revision).
(11) CDC’s data and visualization, still being updated.
Stats Watch
Manufacturing: “United States Durable Goods Orders” (Trading Economics). “New orders for manufactured durable goods in the United States rose by 0.7% month-over-month in April 2024, following a downwardly revised 0.8% increase in March and defying market expectations of a 0.8% decrease. It marked the third consecutive monthly advance in durable goods orders, primarily propelled by robust demand for transport equipment (1.2% vs 2.5% in March).”
Consumer Sentiment: “United States Michigan Consumer Sentiment” (Trading Economics). “The University of Michigan consumer sentiment for the US was revised higher to 69.1 in May 2024 from a preliminary reading of 67.4, but remaining the lowest in six months. Inflation expectations for the year-ahead increased less than initially anticipated to 3.3% from 3.5% in the preliminary estimate, but remained the highest in six months.” • Not good for Biden.
Tech: “Imperceptible sensors made from ‘electronic spider silk’ can be printed directly on human skin” (press release) (University of Cambridge). “Researchers have developed a method to make adaptive and eco-friendly sensors that can be directly and imperceptibly printed onto a wide range of biological surfaces, whether that’s a finger or a flower petal. The method, developed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, takes its inspiration from spider silk, which can conform and stick to a range of surfaces. These ‘spider silks’ also incorporate bioelectronics, so that different sensing capabilities can be added to the ‘web’. The fibres, at least 50 times smaller than a human hair, are so lightweight that the researchers printed them directly onto the fluffy seedhead of a dandelion without collapsing its structure. When printed on human skin, the fibre sensors conform to the skin and expose the sweat pores, so the wearer doesn’t detect their presence. Tests of the fibres printed onto a human finger suggest they could be used as continuous health monitors.” • Or, like all new artforms from cave paintings onwards, for pr0n.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 59 Greed (previous close: 58 Greed) (CNN). One week ago: 63 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated May 23 at 12:32:09 PM ET.
Zeitgeist Watch
“Why Do People Hate People?” (Discover). This is a very odd article. It treats hate not as an emotion, but as a matter of law. And it doesn’t raise the issue of manufactured or engineered hate at all.
The Gallery
Midwest Modern:
Midcentury House
Traverse City, MI pic.twitter.com/dz129S0pf4— Midwest Modern (@JoshLipnik) September 30, 2022
Midwest Post-Modern:
Kent St in Greenfield, IA before & after today’s extremely violent tornado. The way landscapes can be deeply altered in mere seconds will never cease to scare the crap out of me. pic.twitter.com/2stRm2wpN8
— Nahel Belgherze (@WxNB_) May 21, 2024
“The Evolution of Hokusai’s Great Wave” (Kottke Dot Org). Well worth a look to see the sequence of prints. A quote from Hokusai himself:
From the age of six I had a penchant for copying the form of things, and from about fifty, my pictures were frequently published; but until the age of seventy, nothing that I drew was worthy of notice. At seventy-three years, I was somewhat able to fathom the growth of plants and trees, and the structure of birds, animals, insects, and fish. Thus, when I reach eighty years, I hope to have made increasing progress, and at ninety to see further into the underlying principles of things, so that at one hundred years I will have achieved a divine state in my art, and at one hundred and ten, every dot and every stroke will be as though alive. Those of you who live long enough, bear witness that these words of mine prove not false.
Pretty much my own view, modulo the numbers….
News of the Wired
“‘My songs spread like herpes’: why did satirical genius Tom Lehrer swap worldwide fame for obscurity?” (Guardian). “Lehrer made my life bearable. I have never been able to tell him so, and it might not please him, for he has been quoted as saying: “If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worthwhile.’” But: “(D)id I find the answer I sought: why Lehrer gave it all up? I am not sure. What I can tell you is that Tom Lehrer is a prodigiously talented man who has no interest at all in money for its own sake, or in money to wield power. He wants enough to be comfortable and to do the few things he wants to do, and he has that. I suspect too that, despite his protestations to the contrary, there is a serious man underneath the caustic, cynical front. He once said that you cannot be funny if you are angry. He could just about stay detached enough to be funny about Eisenhower’s America. Trying to be funny about a nation that can elect a President Trump might tear him apart.” • For those who came in late:
Sending this out to Bush, Blinken, and Big Z….
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