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2:00PM Water Cooler 8/20/2024 | naked capitalism

News RoomBy

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Bird Song of the Day

Thrashers 4EVA!

California Thrasher, Placerita Canyon Nature Center, Los Angeles, California, United States. Additional species: Spotted Towhee, Pipilo maculatus, Bewick’s Wren.

The flight of the honey buzzard:

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In Case You Might Miss…

Democrat National Convention vignettes.
Highest Covid wave in two years.
Stupid money and blood money.

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Look for the Helpers

Citizen science:

A thread of people chiming in about how this corn is fun to grow. The seeds can be purchased at Alliance of Native Seed Keepers.

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My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza). –>

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

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2024

Less than one hundred days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

There is no good news here for Trump. The deterioration in both Pennsylvania and Georgia is especially marked. Remember, however, that all the fluctuations — in fact, all the leads — are within the margin of error. So the “joy” is based on, well, vibes.

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Democrat National Convention Vignettes:

Warnock also owes me six hundred bucks:

Joy through Strength:

Ironclad commitement (1):

Ironclad commitment (2):

The voice of a new generation (1):

The voice of a new generation (2):

And speaking of fascism:

Surgical removal of the sense of shame:

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

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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, KF, 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!

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Transmission: Covid

“The US is experiencing its largest summer Covid wave in at least two years” [CNN]. “It may be time to dust off the face masks and air purifiers. The US is in the midst of a significant Covid-19 wave, with viral activity levels in wastewater the highest they’ve been for a summer surge since July 2022, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s wastewater dashboard. The CDC’s measure of national Covid viral activity in wastewater rose to 8.82 on August 10 – falling shy of a peak of 9.56 in July 2022. The CDC says the most recent data is incomplete and may change. Before it started rising again in May, it was at 1.36. ‘Currently, the COVID-19 wastewater viral activity level is very high nationally, with the highest levels in the Western US region,’ Dr. Jonathan Yoder, deputy director of the CDC’s Wastewater Surveillance Program, said in an email. ‘This year’s COVID-19 wave is coming earlier than last year, which occurred in late August/early September.’” • I believe I started muttering about this oncoming wave a while ago….. Stay safe out there!

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TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Lambert here: Worth noting that national Emergency Room admissions are as high as they were in the first wave, in 2020.

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] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Keeps spreading.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. First showing of the new variant from China, XDV.1 (though it didn’t appear in traveler’s data).

[4] (ER) Worth noting Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Going down. Doesn’t need to be a permanent thing, of course. (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 then around the country through air travel.)

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.

[7] (Walgreens) Fiddling and diddling.

[8] (Cleveland) Jumping.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time range. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.

[10] (Travelers: Variants) The new variant in China, XDV.1, is not showing up here.

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.

[12] Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

There are no statistics of interest today.

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Tech: Dark patterns at Google:

And:

“I expected….” Musical interlude.

Supply Chain: “Consumer goods maker Newell Brands isn’t waiting to see what the impact of new trade policies will be on its manufacturing plans” [Logistics Report, Wall Street Journal]. “The company has shifted production of its Sharpie retractable pens, Oster blenders and other goods from China to its own plants in the U.S. and Mexico, as well as Southeast Asia…. Newell is among a growing set of companies that are recognizing that protectionism underpinned by tariffs will be a feature of U.S. trade policy in coming years no matter who wins the White House this fall. President Biden has left a swath of Trump administration tariffs in place, triggering a broad resetting of corporate supply chains, and Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t signaled that she would veer away from the tactic.”

Supply Chain: “China-Mexico flights reopen amid manufacturers’ Latin American push” [Nikkei Asia]. “China’s airlines are reopening direct services linking the country to Mexico after a hiatus during the coronavirus pandemic, as a wave of Chinese manufacturers set up shop in the North American production hub.”

Manufacturing: “What went wrong with Boeing’s spaceship” [NBC]. “Here’s what went wrong with Boeing’s Starliner capsule. NASA and Boeing have been monitoring two separate issues with the Starliner: one with a set of thrusters and the other involving helium leaks in its propulsion system. Engineers with NASA and Boeing have been using a test engine at the space agency’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico to study the performance of the thrusters…. Preliminary results indicated that all but one of the 28 reaction control system thrusters performed well, but NASA said various tests have shown that a tiny Teflon seal seemed to swell under high temperatures, which could block the flow of propellant into the thrusters…. However, Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said this month that the team ‘can’t totally prove with certainty what we’re seeing on orbit is exactly what’s been replicated on the ground.’… Separately, teams have also been monitoring slow helium leaks in the spacecraft’s propulsion system. Mission managers knew about one helium leak before Starliner’s launch but said at the time that the slow leak was manageable and unlikely to affect the mission or compromise the astronauts’ safety.” • What went wrong with Boeing’s spaceship is Boeing. That new CEO may have some decisions to make, fast.

Labor Market: “Fed Confronts Up to a Million US Jobs Vanishing in Revision” [Bloomberg]. “US job growth in the year through March was likely far less robust than initially estimated, which risks fueling concerns that the Federal Reserve is falling further behind the curve to lower interest rates. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. economists expect the government’s preliminary benchmark revisions on Wednesday to show payrolls growth in the year through March was at least 600,000 weaker than currently estimated — about 50,000 a month. While JPMorgan Chase & Co. forecasters see a decline of about 360,000, Goldman Sachs indicates it could be as large as a million…. Powell and his colleagues have recently said they’re focusing more on the labor side of their dual mandate, and he’ll take the benchmark revisions into account in his Friday speech at the Fed’s annual symposium.”

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Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 45 Neutral (previous close: 41 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 35 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 20 at 1:00:43 PM ET.

Zeitgeist Watch

Mood:

strong>Guillotine Watch

Stupid money:

“New York Times erases Garry Tan’s ‘die slow’ tweet explosion” [The Nerd Reich]. “The New York Times Magazine published a story that glowingly depicted Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan as a paragon of mental health success thanks to executive coaching. But the story left out a crucial detail: Tan is the CEO who made headlines for getting drunk and tweeting ‘die slow’ at seven members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in January. That’s one hell of a fact to leave out of a piece that positioned executive ‘coaching’ as an alternative to real therapy…. [Tan] the tech CEO spearheading a campaign to take over San Francisco City Hall in November.” • California dreaming….

Class Warfare

“Blood Money: Selling Plasma to Avoid High-Interest Loans” [The Review of Financial Studies]. ” We exploit dramatic growth in the U.S. blood plasma industry to shed light on the sellers of plasma. Sellers tend to be young and liquidity-constrained with low incomes and limited access to traditional credit. Plasma centers absorb demand for nontraditional credit. After a plasma center opens nearby, demand for payday loans falls by over 13% among young borrowers. Meanwhile, foot traffic increases by over 4% at nearby stores, suggesting that constrained households use plasma markets to smooth consumption without appealing to high-cost debt.” • It’s nice that our young people have options! Now do kidneys….

“Study Finds That Legalized Sports Betting Is Leading to More Bankruptcies, Lower Credit Scores” [Zaid Jilani, The American Saga]. “[A trio of California researchers found] an increase in auto loan delinquencies once sports gambling is legalized. For states with online access to gambling, they found a 28% increase in the likelihood of bankruptcy and an 8% increase in debt collection amounts. They also found a reduction in access to credit — shown through lower credit limits and a higher ratio of secured to unsecured loans.” • Caltrops wherever you look…

News of the Wired

“Uniqueness Bias: Why It Matters, How to Curb It” [arXiv]. The Abtract: “The paper explores ‘uniqueness bias,’ a behavioral bias defined as the tendency of planners and managers to see their decisions as singular. For the first time, uniqueness bias is correlated with forecasting accuracy and performance in real-world project investment decisions. We problematize the conventional framing of projects as unique and hypothesize that it leads to poor project performance. We test the thesis for a sample of 219 projects and find that perceived uniqueness is indeed highly statistically significantly associated with underperformance. Finally, we identify how decision makers can mitigate uniqueness bias in their projects through what Daniel Kahneman aptly called “decision hygiene,” specifically reference class forecasting, premortems, similarity-based forecasting, and noise audits.”

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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 Teton Time:

Plants in the Tetons.

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