2:00PM Water Cooler 8/12/2024 | naked capitalism

Celebrity Watch

“Olympics silver medalist Malaika Mihambo collapses and breaks down in tears before being taken away in wheelchair” (The Sun). The deck: “The long jumper is not the only athlete to have suffered from Covid.”

“American sprinter Noah Lyles says he tested positive for Covid-19, ran 200-meter race anyway” (CNN). “The news of Lyles’ positive test came not long after he suffered a stunning defeat in the men’s 200-meter race, his signature event. Lyles finished in third, unable to overcome Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo and his Team USA compatriot Kenneth Bednarek, who finished in first and second place, respectively. However, the result of the race was quickly bumped from the headlines when Lyles laid down on the track immediately following his crossing the finish line. He was helped off the track by medical personnel in a wheelchair and taken to the medical holding area.” • The iconic photo:

Commentary:

These athletes worked so hard to be on the world stage only to be robbed by a myth.

They could have mandated masks, they could have taken precautions, but no – they wanted to pretend everything was back to normal.

Clearly, It’s not. pic.twitter.com/XoKTNATVUl

— DDave (@D_Bone) August 8, 2024

If the message was not “Things are back to normal,” the back-up message was “Power through!” For whatever reason, I don’t think either message took.

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

(10) (Travelers: Variants) It’s rumored that there’s a new variant in China, XDV.1, but it’s not showing up here.

(11) Deaths low, but positivity up.

(12) Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

Inflation: “United States Consumer Inflation Expectations” (Trading Economics). “US consumer inflation expectations for the year ahead were unchanged at 3% in July 2024, the same as in June…. Meanwhile, median three-year-ahead inflation expectations declined sharply by 0.6 percentage point to 2.3%, hitting a series low.”

Mr. Market: “Wall Street’s ‘fear gauge’ might be lying to you about last week’s market turmoil” (Financial Times). “In a note titled “Did VIX Really Hit 65 on Monday?”, published last week, Academy Securities strategist Peter Tchir unpicked some of the odd dynamics underpinning movement in the volatility measure often labelled Wall Street’s Fear Gauge.” Since I don’t play the ponies, this is where I got lost. This seems relevant: “Part of the evidence for something being off in the VIX is the spread versus VIX futures, says Tchir (who asks ‘So, I’m supposed to trust a calculation rather than a traded price?’)…. These distortions, Tchir reckons, show there ‘was fear’ but no ‘panic’ last Monday — despite what the VIX highs might indicate.” • Maybe a reader who does play the ponies can explain.

Real Estate: “San Francisco Is Sinking in Bad Hotel Debt” (Wall Street Journal). “In the city’s metropolitan area, the delinquency rate among commercial mortgage-backed security loans for the lodging sector skyrocketed to 41.6% in June from 5.7% in June 2023, according to data from real-estate analytics firm Trepp. It is the largest increase across the country’s 25 largest metro areas. ”

Tech: “Apple’s requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon. Here’s what you need to know” (Patreon). “Apple is requiring us to switch over to their in-app purchase system for all iOS transactions or else risk being kicked out of the App Store altogether – and their in-app purchase system is not built with our same level of creator-first flexibility…. Apple will be applying their 30% App Store fee to all new memberships purchased in the Patreon iOS app, in addition to anything bought in your Patreon shop…. Patreon is home to an incredible range of creators, all with unique circumstances and billing needs. Apple’s in-app purchase system, on the other hand, only supports Patreon’s subscription billing model. Apple has also made clear that if creators on Patreon continue to use unsupported billing models or disable transactions in the iOS app, we will be at risk of having the entire app removed from their App Store.” • I’m not a Patreon user or subscriber, but this is ridiculous. Apple taking a 30% cut from all creator’s fees, because it can? Sounds like a job for Lina Khan.

Tech: “The US government wants to make it easier for you to click the ‘unsubscribe’ button” (Associated Press). “In the name of consumer protection, a slew of U.S. federal agencies are working to make it easier for Americans to click the unsubscribe button for unwanted memberships and recurring payment services. A broad new government initiative, dubbed ‘Time Is Money,’ includes a rollout of new regulations and the promise of more for industries spanning from healthcare and fitness memberships to media subscriptions. ‘The administration is cracking down on all the ways that companies, through paperwork, hold times and general aggravation waste people’s money and waste people’s time and really hold onto their money,’ Neera Tanden, White House domestic policy adviser, told reporters Friday in advance of the announcement.” • Fine, now abolish the health insurance “industry” in favor of single payer. (Also, first mention of Neera in awhile; will she slither into Kamala’s good graces?)

Manufacturing: “NASA says lack of trained New Orleans workers led to issues with Boeing Artemis rocket program” (Times-Picayune (Upstatee)). “In a scathing report issued Thursday, NASA’s Office of Inspector General cited rocket maker Boeing, which employs more than 1,000 people at Michoud, for dozens of problems on its Space Launch System rockets that are being assembled there.

An upgraded version of the SLS rocket is more than seven years behind schedule and $1 billion over budget, and federal monitors found 71 problems on the Michoud-based project ranging from minor to potentially serious. ‘This is a high number…for a space flight system at this stage in development and reflects a recurring and degraded state of product quality control,’ said the report, which covered a two-year period from 2021 through 2023…. e report said the problems at Michoud are largely due to a ‘lack of a sufficient number of trained and experienced aerospace workers at Boeing,’ which it said was ‘in part due to Michoud’s geographical location in New Orleans and .’” • Those union-busting MBAs in Chicago sure showed ’em!

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 24 Exreme Fear (previous close: 23 Extreme Fear) (CNN). One week ago: 25 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 12 at 12:55:23 PM ET.

Rapture Index: Closes unchanged (Rapture Ready). Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 183. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Hard to believe the Rapture Index is going down. Where are there people getting their news?!

Zeitgeist Watch

“Repair and Remain” (Comment). “for twelve years now I’ve had a hybrid operation, juggling a one-man autodidact home-repair business and part-time lay ministry at a little Anglican church in Winnipeg. My basic MO in both roles is simple: repair and remain. I don’t have the know-how to build you a brand-new house, but I can help fix pretty much anything in your old one. If you do, in fact, need a new house, I’ll send you to Francesco or Myron, or James and Fiona, all of them trustworthy builders and fine people. Odds are the house you’re in right now needs a few updates and minor upgrades, and I’d be happy to help with whatever you need done: add some new windows, open up some walls, replace the old basement stairs, tile the backsplash. Repair and remain. Same with pastoring: no point thinking you need a brand-new life, but, well, let’s not kid around—you could use some serious updates and upgrades yourself.”

News of the Wired

“KnitScape” (University of Washington). “We present KnitScape, a browser-based tool for design and simulation of stitch patterns for knitting. KnitScape provides a design interface to specify 1) operation repeats, 2) color changes, and 3) needle positions. These inputs are used to build a graph of yarn topology and run a yarn-level spring simulation. This enables visualization of the deformation that arises from slip and tuck operations. Through its design tool and simulation, KnitScape enables rapid exploration of a complex colorwork design space. We demonstrate KnitScape with a series of example swatches.”

“A UX designer walks into a Tesla Bar” (Scott Jensen). From 2021. “Most importantly, in 99% of cars on the road today, I don’t need to RTFM to turn steer, accelerate, brake, use the turn signals, or turn on the damn defroster. That’s why these things are standardized. There are lots of things I will likely need the manual for but not these basics. The v11 design broke this.” • How the Mac used to work under the Human Interface Guidlines; everything standardized and ultimately visible. Phones aren’t standardized and hide things. People seem to like it….

“Coffee’s Epic Journey” (Archeology Magazine). “around 30,000 years ago, the C. arabica populations on the eastern and western sides of the Great Rift Valley split. The descendants of the plants on the eastern side were eventually brought to and cultivated at the future site of the Yemeni city of Mocha, while those on the western side remained wild. Little is recorded of coffee’s trajectory for thousands of years after this, says Salojärvi. “There are old folklore stories of people eating red berries from bushes in around A.D. 600 or 700 because of their invigorating properties,” he says. It is clear that, by the fifteenth or sixteenth century, coffee was being cultivated in Yemen. Oral histories say that, around the turn of the seventeenth century, Baba Budan, an Indian monk with a passion for coffee, smuggled seven C. arabica seeds from Yemen to his homeland, from which it spread around the world. A century later, Dutch colonists cultivating C. arabica on the Indonesian island of Java produced a variety known as Typica. And, on the Indian Ocean island of Bourbon (now Réunion), the descendants of a single C. arabica plant propagated by French colonists in 1720 spawned the Bourbon variety. The Typica and Bourbon varieties largely gave rise to present-day C. arabica, which is cultivated worldwide and makes up some 60 percent of coffee consumed today. ‘Most modern coffee can be traced back to two individual plants cultivated three hundred years ago,’ says Salojärvi. Today’s coffee drinkers have C. arabica’s adaptability to thank for their daily cup of joe.” • Fast work!

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 Carla:

Carla writes: “Sunset on Lake Erie, Cleveland, Ohio, featuring branch of an unknown (to me) tree.” Like a Japanese print!

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