2:00PM Water Cooler 12/27/2022 | bare capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Affected person readers, I’ve been gifted with a horrible head chilly that peaked on Xmas Day and is now slowly passing on, leaving in its wake a variety of sneezing and grumbling. (No, it’s not Covid. Actually.) So I’m feeling a bit of uninspired. –lambert

Chicken Tune of the Day

Home Bunting, Tata, Morocco. “On resort roof.” With crowing rooster! “Home bunting?” “No, I’m simply trying to lease.”

Politics

“However what’s authorities itself, however the best of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“Right here’s meals for thought, had Ahab time to suppose; however Ahab by no means thinks; he solely feels, feels, feels” –Herman Melville, Moby Dick

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

Capitol Seizure

“U.S. Home Jan. 6 committee investigated 4 Texas conservative figures, transcripts reveal” [Texas Tribune]. “The 4 Texans the panel interviewed had been Bianca Gracia, a pacesetter of Latinos for Trump; Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist; Stewart Rhodes, the militia chief just lately convicted of seditious conspiracy; and James P. Waldron, a retired Military colonel and knowledge warfare specialist. Most of these interviewed refused to reply questions.” This, nonetheless, is the buried lead: “Rhodes’ testimony shed new gentle on the membership of the Oath Keepers: At its peak a number of years in the past, Rhodes advised the committee, the Oath Keepers had roughly 40,000 dues-paying members — roughly 20% of whom he mentioned labored in legislation enforcement.” • 20% is rather a lot. A lot LE, so many spooks, so many informers. However they had been all taken fully abruptly!

“Jan. 6 report sidesteps federal intelligence failures earlier than lethal Capitol riot” [Yahoo News]. “Whereas detailing a number of warnings of violence collected by U.S. legislation enforcement and intelligence officers about protests deliberate for Jan. 6, the Home choose committee’s report largely avoids the difficulty of how federal businesses dealt with the data or why they did not share the complete extent of the threats with U.S. Capitol Law enforcement officials tasked with defending Congress from the violent mob that stormed the Capitol constructing. The choose committee’s mission, as outlined in its authorizing decision, was partly to analyze “the preparedness and response of the USA Capitol Police and different Federal, State, and native legislation enforcement businesses” to the occasions of Jan. 6, 2021.” • My goodness! One can solely surprise why…..

Biden Administration

Giving the present of Covid:

“For all you dad and mom, be robust. We spend a variety of time at Youngsters’s Hospital, with sufferers too. It will be okay.”

President Biden shares a message with a gaggle of sufferers throughout a go to to Youngsters’s Nationwide Hospital in Washington, D.C. pic.twitter.com/qoUCdQ6dmS

— The Hill (@thehill) December 24, 2022

(The problem is just not that Biden isn’t modeling masking conduct, however that Biden believes his conduct is right and needs to be normalized. As does “Dr.” Biden, on the left.)

Democrats en Déshabillé

Affected person readers, evidently persons are really studying the back-dated publish! However I’ve not up to date it, and there are various updates. So I must try this. –lambert

I’ve moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Get together (“the Democrat Get together is a rotting corpse that may’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated publish, to which I’ll periodically add materials, summarizing the addition right here in a “stay” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It seems that defining the Democrat Get together is, in reality, a tough downside. I do suppose the paragraph that follows is on level all the way in which again to 2016, if not earlier than:

The Democrat Get together is the political expression of the category energy of PMC, their base (lucidly defined by Thomas Frank in Pay attention, Liberal!). ; if the Democrat Get together didn’t exist, the PMC must invent it. . (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” in fact.) Second, all of the working components of the Get together reinforce one another. Depart apart characterizing the relationships between parts of the Get together (ka-ching, however not solely) these parts comprise a community — a Flex Web? An iron octagon? — of funders, distributors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with belongings within the press and the intelligence neighborhood.

Be aware, in fact, that the category energy of the PMC each expresses and is proscribed by different courses; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial mannequin’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to thoughts. Suck up, kick down.

* * *

“George Santos admits to mendacity about his resume in a collection of interviews” [City and State]. “Congress Member-Elect George Santos admitted to mendacity about key components of his resume in a collection of media interviews printed Monday night, however left a handful of necessary questions unanswered, as his explanations conflicted with reviews over the previous week.” • Extra from the dogpile. I maintain no temporary for Santos, however he was elected honest and sq.. The standard knowledge. is that Democrats didn’t do their oppo correctly (see the Instances right here). However maintain on. Can anyone consider one other political determine who was elected, and who the Democrats tried to depose with, properly, post-election oppo? (Since that’s what the Steele file was.) I might speculate that Democrats need removing of elected Republican officers for numerous scandals normalized. And that’s why they sandbagged Santos with oppo after the election. (Oh, and Santos is homosexual. Certainly at the least one NGO needs to be vociferously defending him?)

Our Famously Free Press

C’mon, Matty:

I simply wish to be clear that the explanation I mentioned Taibbi wants remedy is that he described himself as struggling psychologically on account of his relationship with social media apps. https://t.co/AkvkeCA9pI pic.twitter.com/layEAjCdFm

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 27, 2022

#COVID19

Lambert right here: I’m however a humble tapewatcher, however in contrast to Eric Topol, I’m not calling a surge, as a result of the final peak was Biden’s Omicron debacle, and after an Everest like that, what’s left? Topol’s view is the institution view: Hospital-centric. Mine is infection-centric. I don’t see the acceleration or doubling in instances that I might anticipate to see based mostly on previous surges. There may be additionally the TripleDemic facet, which I don’t know sufficient about.

I’m calling a “One thing Terrible.” It’s gonna be dangerous, in some new approach, and we don’t know the way, but. Wastewater has taken off in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, proper on time, two weeks after Thanksgiving. These should not solely in themselves massive cities, they’re all of the websites of worldwide airports (paying homage to the preliminary surge in spring 2020, which emanated, through air journey, from New York). Wastewater is a number one indicator for instances, which in flip lead hospitalization (and dying). As well as, positivity has begun to extend once more (Walgreens), and BQ.1* has taken over. Lastly, I’m listening to a ton of anecdotes (and please add yours in feedback).

Keep protected on the market! If you’re planning to journey on New 12 months’s, do think about your plans fastidiously.

• I can’t hold giving this dude Sociopath of the Day Awards; it might be unseemly. As a part of Wachter’s newest homework task, a 25-tweet protocol for “private danger evaluation,” we see the model he makes use of of the well-known “Swiss Cheese” diagram of layered safety:

(I really like that “To make it simple to recollect” half.) Right here is James Cause’s model (from the NC archives). Cause is an “error administration” scholar, and the developer of the mannequin:

Discover any distinction? That’s proper. Like the nice libertarian sociopath he’s, Wachter has diminished the mannequin to “private tasks” solely, and erased “shared tasks” solely. This issues, even to the person, as a result of have a look at his air flow recommendation: “Assembly open air is most secure, enhance air flow indoors by opening home windows and utilizing moveable air cleaners.” As a result of Wachter erased institutional settings solely, he can not suggest (for instance) C02 monitoring. Nor can he suggest Japan’s well-known 3C’s mannequin; “shared duty” is just not a part of his universe.

• “The XBB.1.5 variant is on a progress spurt in the USA” [Eric Topol, Ground Truths]. “Now it seems that in New York State, XBB advanced additional to XBB.1.5, with new mutations, which was aptly first famous by JP Weiland a few weeks in the past, coincident with the start of a steep rise of hospitalizations there. The important thing mutation of XBB.1.5 is clearly F486P, which had been recognized many months in the past by the Bloom lab as one that may be tied to immunity escape and Ryan Hisner wrote about extensively in August. As you’ll be able to see from Daniel Focosi’s convergent variant map of the BA.2 descendants, XBB.1.5 is one to accumulate the F486P mutation….. If XBB.1.5 has such fast progress benefit over BQ.1.1, that isn’t an excellent signal. Final week, David Ho’s lab at Columbia College printed a paper in Cell entitled ‘Alarming antibody evasion properties of rising SARS-CoV-2 BQ and XBB subvariants.’”

• Maskstravaganza: “Ought to Everybody Be Masking Once more?” [The Atlantic]. Oh, hell no. “David Dowdy, an epidemiologist on the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Faculty of Public Well being, is all for masking season, he advised me, however he’d be extra hesitant to resort to mandates. ‘It’s laborious to impose mandates with no very robust public-health rationale,’ he mentioned, particularly in our present, hyperpolarized local weather. And though that rationale clearly existed for a lot of the previous two crisis-ridden years, it’s much less clear now. ‘COVID is not this public-health emergency, but it surely’s nonetheless killing hundreds of individuals each week, lots of a day … so it turns into a more difficult balancing act,’ Dowdy mentioned.” • The thoughts reels. What does Dowdy think about an “emergency”? And the PMC do love them their balancing acts. “Exhausting decisions.” “Delicate phases.”

Transmission

Right here is CDC’s interactive map by county set to neighborhood transmission (the “pink map”). (That is the map CDC wants only hospitals to look at, not you.) The map updates Monday-Friday by 8 pm:

NOTE: I shall most definitely not be utilizing the CDC’s new “Group Stage” metric. As a result of CDC has mixed a number one indicator (instances) with a lagging one (hospitalization) their new metric is a poor warning signal of a surge, and a poor strategy to assess private danger. As well as, Covid is a illness you don’t wish to get. Even in case you are not hospitalized, you’ll be able to undergo from Lengthy Covid, vascular points, and neurological points. That the “inexperienced map” (which Topol calls a “capitulation” and a “deception”) remains to be up and being taken severely verges on the felony.

Positivity

From the Walgreen’s check positivity tracker, printed December 26:

-1.9%. Lower, however who will get examined on Christmas or Boxing Day? NOTE: After all, it’s an open query how good a proxy Walgreen’s self-selected topics are for the final inhabitants, particularly as a result of they didn’t go the home-testing route, however we go together with the information we’ve got.

Wastewater

Wastewater information (CDC), December 20:

An excessive amount of pink (particularly with Ohio again on-line). JFK/LGA (Queens County, NY), ORD (Cook dinner County, IL), SFO (San Francisco, CA), LAX (Los Angeles), and ATL (Cobb County, GA) are all pink. See additionally this morning’s Hyperlinks for a map that reveals the airports with lengthy delays which can be additionally pink dots.

December 19:

And MWRA information, December 21:

Lambert right here: Up in each North and South. Odd? Haven’t the scholars already left city?

Variants

Lambert right here: It’s past irritating how sluggish the variant information is. Does no person within the public well being institution get a promotion for monitoring variants? Are there no grants? Is there a single lab that does this work, and everyone will get the outcomes from them? [grinds teeth, bangs head on desk]. UPDATE Sure. See NC right here on Pango. Each Friday, a stately, educational tempo totally incompatible with defending your self towards a variant exhibiting doubling conduct.

NOT UPDATED Variant information, nationwide (Walgreens), December 11:

Lambert right here: BQ.1* dominates, XBB arising quick on the surface. Unsure why this information is popping out earlier than CDC’s, since up to now they each bought it from Pango on Fridays.

NOT UPDATED Variant information, nationwide (CDC), December 3 (Nowcast off):

BQ.1* takes first place. Be aware the looks of XBB. Right here is Area 2, the Northeast, the place each BQ.1* and XBB are mentioned to greater, and are:

• As a test, since New York is a BQ.1* hotbed, New York hospitalization, up to date December 24:

Resuming the upward climb after a brief plateau.

• Hospitalization information for Queens, up to date December 20:

We’ll see what’s hospitalization is like about two weeks into January, after vacation journey has ended.

Deaths

Demise fee (Our World in Information):

Whole: 1,116,095 – 1,115,748 = 347 (347 * 365 = 126,655 deaths per yr, at the moment’s YouGenicist™ quantity for “dwelling with” Covid (fairly a bit greater than the minimizers would really like, although they’ll speak themselves into something. If the YouGenicist™ metric retains chugging alongside like this, I could must determine that is what the powers-that-be think about “mission achieved” for this specific tranche of dying and illness).

It’s good that for deaths I’ve a easy, day by day chart that simply retains chugging alongside, in contrast to all the things else CDC and the White Home are screwing up or letting go darkish, good job.

Stats Watch

Manufacturing: “United States Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Federal Reserve Financial institution of Dallas’ basic enterprise exercise index for manufacturing in Texas fell to -18.8 in December of 2022 from -14.4 within the prior month, pointing to the eighth contraction within the exercise…. Capital expenditures sank sharply.”

Transportation: “Hey guys, SWA pilot with a bit of info” [r/SouthwestAirlines, Reddit]. “That is solely managements fault. Gary Kelly, and the brand new CEO, and company barons have fully gutted the philosophy Herb believed in, which was investing in staff. They’ve recognized for months that many crews had been stretched to absolutely the restrict. It was solely a matter of time earlier than one thing induced a cascading collection of failures that spiraled uncontrolled. The board and CEO knew this, and selected to as an alternative give themselves multi-million greenback bonuses and threaten to fireside employees, together with dragging out contract negotiations with the unions within the hopes there shall be a recession. That is company mismanagement to a degree I’ve by no means seen on this trade throughout my 25 years.” And: “”I’ve mates in CS and the resort task facet too. There have been 2 particular issues, the software program for scheduling is woefully antiquated by at the least 20 years. No app/web choices, all guide entry and it has settings that you just DO NOT CHANGE for concern of crashing it. These settings create the automated circulate as a crewmember is transferring about their day, it doesn’t know you flew the leg DAL-MCO it simply assumes it and strikes your piece ahead. Within the occasion of a disruption you name scheduling they usually manually regulate you. It does work, it simply works for an airline 1/3 the dimensions of SWA. So the storm got here and it impacted floor ops so dangerous that many many crews had been now ‘unaccounted’ for and the system in place couldn’t sustain. Then it occurred for a number of extra days. By Xmas night the CS division had basically reached the shortcoming to do something however easy, one off assignments.” • Commentary:

It’s like McKinsey offered all of them the identical three-ring binder.

As we speak’s Worry & Greed Index: 39 Worry (earlier shut: 38 Worry) [CNN]. One week in the past: 37 (Worry). (0 is Excessive Worry; 100 is Excessive Greed). Final up to date Dec 27 at 1:19 PM EST.

Xmas Postgame Evaluation

I feel we’ve bought a class error right here:

Although I do see the purpose.

Zeitgeist Watch

“On sincerity” [Joe Carlsmith].

My hope, on this essay, is to convey what I imply by sincerity into clearer view. However the time period has a reasonably wealthy set of associations for me, which I’m undecided will in the end admit of a cleanly unified evaluation. I begin by discussing 5 of those associations. Sincerity appears to me intently associated to:

• One thing like truth-seeking (“scout-mindset“), however for company as an entire reasonably than simply beliefs
• “Not taking part in fake”
• One’s totally different motivations working in concord
• “Seriousness”
• (Much less confidently) Some stuff about non-ego/altruism/goodness

I then focus on whether or not we are able to unify these 5 associations below a single precept. I supply two potentialities for doing so. The primary is conceptual, and takes scout-mindset-but-for-agency because the core factor. The second is empirical, and takes “not taking part in fake” because the core factor. I’m undecided both is satisfactory.

I additionally focus on a number of of the various failure modes close by to sincerity: self-deception, extremism, over-confidence, “the-normal-rules-don’t-apply-to-me”-ness, sanctimony, over-concern with sincerity itself (each in others, and in your self), and that the majority easy and fearsome of failures: simply plain choosing the unsuitable actions, even should you did the opposite stuff proper.

I take the view that for an artist — we’re not all artists — solely the work issues. “Sincerity” is totally irrelevant.

The Screening Room

“13 years in the past, ‘Avatar 2′ was unattainable. Contained in the groundbreaking plan to drag it off” [Los Angeles Times]. The actors are literally underwater throughout their scenes (!). “‘That is in contrast to something ever performed earlier than,’ mentioned Kirk Krack, the skilled free diver and coach who educated actors, stunt performers and crew for months main as much as the ‘Avatar’ shoot. ‘It’s the largest diving film of all time as a result of it’s shot moist for moist — this isn’t Aquaman hanging on a wire with a fan of their hair. This isn’t some [VFX artist] programming what they suppose swimming appears to be like like. … There’s by no means been a film that has performed what this underwater unit did to the extent we did it, to the realism of the truth we’ve performed.’ An opportunity assembly on a shared flight years earlier had given Krack, a veteran free diver who labored on the 2009 documentary “The Cove,” the chance to introduce himself to Cameron. ‘I walked up and mentioned, ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Krack remembered with a smile. ‘My title’s Kirk. I’m a free diver, and I’m going handy you my card and say, ‘How lengthy are you able to maintain your breath?’… ‘He tells me concerning the challenge, the totally different movies, how [‘Avatar’] 2 is 60% water, 3 is 30%, 4 and 5 shall be 15%,’ Krack mentioned. ‘How the brand new Na’vi of the ocean are referred to as Metkayina, they’re free divers, and the issues they’ll have with seize due to the bubbles. They’re considering of rebreathers as an alternative of scuba programs, and do I feel free diving might do it? I mentioned, ‘Completely. And right here’s how I might do it.’ …. However one among Krack’s proudest moments was watching [SIgnourney] Weaver, who was 69 years outdated when she started free diving coaching, outlast a stunt diver on breath maintain whereas performing a scene as her new Na’vi character Kiri, {the teenager} Jake and Neytiri have adopted into their household.” • That is fairly neat. Though the film might stil be a dud. Have any readers seen it?

E book Nook

“Did the Mom of Younger Grownup Literature Determine as a Man?” [New York Times]. • By Betteridge’s Regulation, no.

Our Famously Free Press

“No person cares about your weblog!” [Medieval Manuscripts Provenance]. • An enchanting story of educational theft, and a salutary reminder that old-school blogs nonetheless exist.

Class Warfare

“The Bother with Experience: Why You Ought to Often Belief Consultants (However It’s Sophisticated)” [Philospher’s Magazine]. Attention-grabbing:

The true hassle with specialists is just not with experience itself, however how specialists behave. Consultants don’t all the time use their experience in methods which can be useful to non-experts.

· Generally they’ve a battle of curiosity or a political motivation.

· Consultants generally communicate outdoors their area – a phenomenon referred to as “epistemic trespassing.”

· They might attempt to inform you issues that aren’t “tell-able,” as when a really profitable particular person tries to provide step-by-step recommendation on methods to navigate all of the obstacles they dealt with intuitively.

· Consultants might supply recommendation that doesn’t meet your wants.

Along with these considerations, some points get tousled with political or non secular views that make it tough to know when an professional is basically performing like an professional (and attempting that will help you) or when specialists are talking from their private political allegiances. That is particularly regarding when the difficulty is time-sensitive, as within the case of pandemic ailments like COVID-19.

Additional nonetheless, generally entire fields of experience give the unsuitable reply in a horrible approach. Think about the sector of medication. Medical researchers have exploited folks of color, obstetricians have ignored medical selections from ladies in labour, pharmaceutical companies have conspired to extend habit, and trans sufferers are routinely stigmatised or refused care. There are many causes to be sceptical about specialists. However it’s necessary to notice that these causes don’t have anything to do with experience. The difficulty comes due to the facility specialists must put folks in compromising positions and to make use of their positions in ways in which hurt others.

What’s the future for specialists?

It needs to be clear that we are able to’t stay with out trusting specialists. The world is much too sophisticated. You’re counting on hundreds of specialists proper now simply to have the ability to entry the phrases you’re studying on-line. However the extra we be taught concerning the human facet of experience, the extra causes we’ve got to be cautious.

A step towards bettering professional reliability is so as to add checks on professional judgment. Fairly than having a single doctor make medical selections, today medication is usually a team-based affair. Nurses, social staff, ethicists, and others are concerned to ensure crucial elements of the affected person’s life, social scenario, preferences, and values aren’t missed. Equally, for government-funded analysis, Institutional Evaluation Boards (IRBs) consider research for moral considerations about how contributors are knowledgeable and handled.

Extra checks and balances can be a good suggestion. Maybe specialists ought to do pair programming. Paired by sortion?

Calling all Turing Take a look at professionals:

Information of the Wired

“How do snowflakes type? Get the science behind snow” [NOAA]. “Q: So, why aren’t any two snowflakes precisely alike? A: Properly, that’s as a result of particular person snowflakes all comply with barely totally different paths from the sky to the bottom —and thus encounter barely totally different atmospheric circumstances alongside the way in which. Due to this fact, all of them are likely to look distinctive, resembling all the things from prisms and needles to the acquainted lacy sample.” • Neat!

I’m undecided that is such a good suggestion:

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