2:00PM Water Cooler 4/24/2024 | bare capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Affected person readers, my technique of “mendacity flat” has, up to now, induced a fast rebound in my signs, so hopefully I can be roughly regular tomorrow. –lambert. No orts and scraps at this time; I’ll resume my coverage of masterful inactivity. From my studying of the Trumo trial up to now, it’s sound and fury, with Bragg’s thoery of the case wanting even weaker. Extra tomorrow.

Chicken Tune of the Day

American Woodcock, Powatan WMA Powerline Path, Powhatan, Virginia, United States. Courtship, show, or copulation; Flying.” Having a tough time finfind an American Woodcock that doesn’t sound digital.

Politics

“So most of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in actual fact a rational administration of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

2024

Lower than a 12 months to go!

RCP Ballot Averages, April 19:

Right here this Friday’s RCP polling. Trump remains to be doing very nicely in virtually all of the Swing States (more here), leading with one exception: PA. Forget all the arithmetic, and look at PA as a test of the Trump campaign’s basic competence. What are they doing to fix this? (I’ll work out a better way to present this, but for now: Blue dot = move toward Biden; red dot = move toward Trump. No dot = no change (presumably because state polls are not that numerous so far from election day).

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Trump (R): (Merchan/Bragg): “Trump trial: Key players at the centre of the former president’s criminal case” [BBC]. “Mr Bragg has adopted a novel legal theory that will turn a misdemeanour – falsifying business records – into a felony. He has alleged that Mr Trump changed the business records to cover up a second crime – the violation of New York campaign-finance laws. His office alleges that the Trump campaign sought to hide the affair from voters ahead of the 2016 election. Legal experts have mixed views about whether the gambit will work, but Mr Bragg has pulled together an experienced team of prosecutors who are very familiar with Mr Trump to make the case.”

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Trump (R): “Trump’s map edge: Biden has tougher path to victory, veteran Dem adviser says” [Axios]. “With over six months to go until Election Day, given the volatility in the world and the weaknesses of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, it would be foolish to make firm predictions about specific results. And other electoral map scenarios are possible: Recent polling shows Mr. Biden with a narrow lead in Minnesota, a state that usually votes for Democrats for president. While it is mathematically possible for Mr. Biden to win without carrying Minnesota, it is unlikely he will be elected if he cannot carry this traditionally Democratic state. For the third election cycle in a row, a small number of voters in a handful of states could determine the next president of the United States. If the election remains close but Mr. Biden is unable to regain support from the core group of voters who propelled him to victory in 2020 — young and nonwhite voters — then we could be headed to a repeat of the 2016 election. The outcome of that election was decided by fewer than 80,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” • Normally deprecate swipe-friendly interactive maps, but this is a good one.

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Newsom (D): “Gov Gavin Newsom worries about ‘overindulgence,’ ‘obsession’ with Trump hush money trial: ‘Less is more’” [FOX]. “MSNBC host Jen Psaki asked the Democrat governor about a ‘chorus’ of people who think the hush money trial is only helping Trump politically, which she said was driving her ‘crazy.’” No doubt. More: “She questioned what Newsom might tell an undecided voter about why the case should matter to them. Newsom argued it should matter, but also said that Trump ‘doesn’t care if he’s the hero [“face,” actually] or the heel, he just wants to be the star.’ ‘When we are focusing on him, I do worry electorally that he has a slight advantage. And so, I am a little concerned about the overindulgence around the day-to-day. I get it, I totally get it. The consequential nature of a criminal trial is profound and outsized, in some respect, but not more outsized than democracy, more outsized than Dobbs,’ he said, referring to the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade.” • I think that Newsom makes a good point, but I also think the Democrats won’t be able to help themselves, and more than the Republicans impeaching Clinton could.

Pritzker (D): “Pritzker says Chicago is prepared for DNC amid cease-fire protests” [The Hill]. “‘Just understand that Joe Biden is fighting for peace in the Middle East, is fighting to end the hostilities between Israel and Gaza, and make sure that we’re providing humanitarian aid there,’ he said. When you think about the protests, it’s Joe Biden that’s standing for peace, and a lasting peace at that, and it’s the Republicans that, frankly, would stoke the flames of war in the Middle East.’ Pritzker noted that protest groups calling for a cease-fire shut down an interstate outside of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport last week as part of a national movement, and that Chicago Police quickly escorted the groups off the roadway faster than other protests in the country. ‘Our Chicago Police Department was able to get those folks off the highway faster than any other city in the United States. And they’re prepared for the Democratic Convention,’ he said. ‘Look, we believe in free speech, and we’re going to allow people to protest and say whatever it is they want to say,’ he continued. But the reality is, we’re also going to make sure that people have ingress and egress and that they’re safe in our state.’”

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“Privatization,” in fact, is rarely barbaric:

It’s the very best type of civilization!

Transmission: Covid

“Age-specific nasal epithelial responses to SARS-CoV-2 an infection” [Nature]. In vitro mannequin incorporating in vivo information. From the Summary: “Right here we examine variations within the mobile panorama and performance of paediatric (<12 years), grownup (30–50 years) and older grownup (>70 years) ex vivo cultured nasal epithelial cells in response to an infection with SARS-CoV-2. We present that cell tropism of SARS-CoV-2, and expression of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 in nasal epithelial cell subtypes, differ between age teams. Whereas ciliated cells are viral replication centres throughout all age teams, a definite goblet inflammatory subtype emerges in contaminated paediatric cultures and exhibits excessive expression of interferon-stimulated genes and incomplete viral replication. In distinction, older grownup cultures contaminated with SARS-CoV-2 present a proportional enhance in basaloid-like cells, which facilitate viral unfold and are related to altered epithelial restore pathways.”

TABLE 1: Every day Covid Charts

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new at this time; all others usually are not up to date.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution picture, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Home windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open picture in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (Biobot) Our curve has now flattened out at a stage far above valleys below Trump. Not an excellent victory. Notice additionally the realm “below the curve,” in addition to taking a look at peaks. That space is bigger below Biden than below Trump, and it appears to be rising steadily if erratically.

[2] (Biobot) No backward revisons….

[3] (CDC Variants) As of Could 11, genomic surveillance information can be reported biweekly, based mostly on the provision of constructive check specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring each two weeks. 2. occurring twice per week; semiweekly.” Seems like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to fret about. Time will inform.

[4] (ER) CDC appears to have killed this off, because the hyperlink is damaged, I believe in favor of this factor. I’ll attempt to affirm. UPDATE Sure, go away it to CDC to kill a web page, after which announce it was archived a day later. And heaven forfend CDC ought to clarify the place to go to get equal information, if any. I appreciated the ER information, as a result of it appeared actually onerous to recreation.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Flattening out to a non-zero baseline. I suppose to a tame epidemiologist it seems like “endemicity,” however to me it seems like one other tranche of lethality.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC) Nonetheless down. “Maps, charts, and information supplied by CDC, updates weekly for the earlier MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Division Visits, Take a look at Positivity) and weekly the next Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”.

[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.

[8] (Cleveland) Slight uptrend.

[9] (Vacationers: Posivitity) Uptick.

[10] (Vacationers: Variants) JN.1 dominates completely.

[11] Seems just like the Occasions isn’t reporting loss of life information any extra? Possibly I would like to return to The Economist….

Stats Watch

Manufacturing: “United States Sturdy Items Orders” [Trading Economics]. “New orders for manufactured sturdy items in the USA surged by 2.6% month-over-month in March 2024, following a downwardly revised 0.7% development seen in February and barely exceeding market expectations of a 2.5% enhance. It marked the most important month-to-month advance in sturdy items orders since final November.”

Tech: “The query that no LLM can reply and why it is necessary” [MindPrison]. Good examples. Conclusions: “The implications are that LLMs don’t carry out reasoning over information in the best way that most individuals conceive or want. There isn’t a self-reflection of its data; it doesn’t know what it is aware of and what it doesn’t. The road between hallucination and fact is solely a chance factored by the prevalence of coaching information and post-training processes like fine-tuning. Reliability will at all times be nothing greater than a chance constructed on prime of this structure. As such, it turns into unsuitable as a machine to seek out uncommon hidden truths or priceless uncared for data. . At finest, it might probably present new permutations of views of current well-known ideas, nevertheless it cannot invent new ideas or reveal ideas not often spoken about.” Censorship Indistrial Advanced: “Precisely what we wish!”

Tech: “The Man Who Killed Google Search” [TechMeme (JustTheFacts)]. Seize a cup of espresso, that is nice. It’s so horrid I actually can’t select on merchandise extra horrid than the subsequent The one factor that surprises me is that there’s no Google equal for Boeing’s John Barnett. Can’t we simply nationalize Google, hearth the highest administration, roll the code base again to, say, 2009, and begin over?

Tech: “Google delays third-party cookie demise but once more” [Digiday]. “Google is delaying the tip of third-party cookies in its Chrome browser — once more. In different unsurprising developments, water stays moist… Google didn’t define a extra particular timetable past hoping for 2025. That is the third time Google has pushed again its unique deadline set in January 2020. Again then, the tech behemoth promised to part out third-party cookies “inside two years” to beef up safety for customers whereas browsing the net. However since then, Google’s hit the brakes twice already. And each time, it’s been to provide the advert business extra prep time for one thing that’s been surrounded by a whole lot of ifs, buts, and maybes. Even initially of the 12 months, as Google phased out cookies for one % of browser site visitors, questions loomed over when extra important modifications would happen.”

At present’s Worry & Greed Index: 34 Worry (earlier shut: 31 Worry) [CNN]. One week in the past: 39 (Impartial). (0 is Excessive Worry; 100 is Excessive Greed). Final up to date Apr 22 at 12:48:27 PM ET.

Groves of Academe

Portrait of a professsor not getting it:

can’t wrap my thoughts round how somebody can fuck up understanding 4’33” like this and be a college professor https://t.co/u3zS98d76S

— kate wagner (@mcmansionhell) April 24, 2024

Can anyone discover a first rate well-attested video of the Israeli protester allegedly being poked within the eye by a flag? Large flag with a pole? Small, hand-flag? Thanks@

Information of the Wired

I’m not feeling wired at this time.

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