By Lambert Strether of Corrente<\/p>\n
Bird Song of the Day<\/p>\n
Readers have been so happy with the mockingbirds I\u2019m going to keep doing them. Now entering Day Five of Week Three! Do readers have another favorite bird? Or shall I continue with mockingbirds? The Macaulay Library does have rather a lot!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Long-tailed Mockingbird, Left bank Rio Bocapan (-3.7859,-80.7092), Tumbes, Peru. \u201cIndividual singing naturally on top of a tree 7 m from ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
In Case You Might Miss\u2026 <\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s Covid wastewater (still bad) and polling charts (bad for Trump).
\nLambert lashes himself to the mast.
\nWalz swiftboating: Nice try, no cigar.
\nBoeing\u2019s Starliner debacle. Again.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Politics<\/p>\n
\u201cSo many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.\u201d \u2013Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
2024<\/p>\n
Less than one hundred days to go!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s RCP Poll Averages:<\/p>\n
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More Blue on the map. Trump still leads nationally, but some swing states moving toward Kamala. In particular, I\u2019m no insider, but if I were on Team Trump, Georgia\u2019s drop from +3.6 to this week\u2019s +0.6 might cause me to chew my hands. Georgia? Really? Atlanta burbs no longer sitting it out? Can any readers from Georgia clarify?<\/p>\n
The Weeks That There<\/p>\n
We might characterize the story arc of the last two weeks as \u201cBattle of Vice Presidential Oppo\u201d (oppo propagated by two teams of highly skilled professionals, I might add). First, Democrats smeared J.D. Vance for having documented carnal relations with a sofa in Hillbilly Elegy. This was entirely false, and yet \u2014 and therefore? \u2014 led to an enormous liberalgasm of snark and memage (which some bottom feeders are still stoking). Then, Republicans Swiftboated Tim Walz over his service record, which led to an enormous war dance of conservative frothing and stamping. This sorry episode is not perhaps quite over, but when the Wall Street Journal and Ed Kilgore both agree it\u2019s a damp squib, though not completely fabricated, things aren\u2019t looking good for Swift Boat Original Guy (2004) and Trump campaign co-manager (2024) Chris LaCivita. In neither case did Lambert the Cautious heed the Siren call of oppo, buy in, or join the dogpile. Like Richard Nixon, who also third-personed himself Ulysses, he lashed himself to his ship\u2019s mast so he could hear the Sirens, but not go overboard and join them:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/odysseus-sirens-vase.jpeg\")
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And back in the day, believe me, I would gladly have joined the pack. Today, surtout, pas trop de zele, even leaving aside the lies, the bullshit, and the manipulation [lambert preens].<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
The Campaign Trail:<\/p>\n
Walz:<\/p>\n
Kamala (D): \u201cIs Tim Walz Guilty of \u2018Stolen Valor\u2019?\u201d [Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal]. The deck: \u201cHis military record isn\u2019t a good reason to oppose his candidacy.\u201d And: \u201cThere are plenty of reasons to criticize Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, and we\u2019ve told you about several. But the charges leveled so far about his military service look like \u2018thin gruel,\u2019 as our friends at the New York Sun put it.\u201d \u2022 And from the other side of the aisle\u2013<\/p>\n
Kamala (D): \u201cWhy the Swiftboating of Tim Walz Won\u2019t Work\u201d [Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine]. Results of looking at the timeline: \u201cWill this effort work as it did (to some extent) against John Kerry? Probably not. First of all, the facts underlying the LaCivita-Vance line of attack don\u2019t appear to justify all the angry passion. No one is disputing that Walz served honorably in the Guard for 24 years. The first charge, and perhaps the most serious, is that Walz retired at the end of those 24 years (as he was fully eligible to do) in order to avoid deployment to Iraq. Two former Guard colleagues, apparently infuriated by Walz\u2019s opposition to the Iraq War, first raised this charge as part of an earlier political attack on Walz when he ran for governor in 2018. But other colleagues documented that Walz had been talking for quite some time about retiring in order to run for Congress (which is precisely what he did) and that he had no way of knowing about the subsequent deployment when he retired. There\u2019s really no more evidence of Walz\u2019s alleged cowardice than an assertion by two dudes who clearly didn\u2019t like his politics\u2026. The second charge, which Vance dressed up with the lurid term of \u201cstolen valor,\u201d really just refers to a single ambiguous reference Walz made to carrying a gun \u201cin war,\u201d though others have pointed to a claim in a 2006 Walz press release that he served in \u201cOperation Enduring Freedom\u201d (the official name of the Afghanistan deployment). Whatever viewers of that press release thought, the claim is actually true since Walz and his unit were deployed to Europe in a support capacity for that war. Though Vance didn\u2019t mention it, his conservative allies have also charged that Walz inflated his rank in descriptions of his service. This attack line is probably the flimsiest: Everyone concedes Walz achieved the rank of command sergeant major in the Guard, the highest rank attainable by an enlisted service member. But he didn\u2019t complete some coursework required to retire at that rank. So are a few references on campaign websites to Walz as a \u201cretired command sergeant major\u201d some sort of \u201clie?\u201d I don\u2019t think so; he was retired, and he did achieve that rank. All in all, the attacks on Walz\u2019s military record come across as pretty weak tea. Even the most serious \u2014 the claim that he dodged serving in Iraq \u2014 requires an asterisk: J.D. Vance\u2019s running mate, Donald Trump, has endlessly described that war as a disastrous mistake. By the time he retired from the Guard, Walz shared that view. Should he have stuck around to see if he could be deployed there?\u201d \u2022 Ah well. As FDR said: \u201cTake a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something.\u201d Words both campaigns are living by, apparently.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Kennedy (1): \u201cJoe Rogan Supports Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for President: \u2018He\u2019s the Only One That Makes Sense to Me’\u201d [Variety]. \u201cMega-popular podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan said he supports Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president in this fall\u2019s election. \u2018He\u2019s the only one that makes sense to me,\u2019 Rogan said on Thursday\u2019s episode of \u2018The Joe Rogan Experience\u2019 podcast. \u2018He doesn\u2019t attack people, he attacks actions and ideas, but he\u2019s much more reasonable and intelligent. I mean, the guy was an environmental lawyer and he cleaned up the East River. He\u2019s a legitimate guy.\u2019 Rogan characterized Kennedy as a straight shooter, in contrast to the spin produced by Democrats and Republicans. \u2018That\u2019s politics. They do it on the left, they do it on the right,\u201d Rogan said on the Aug. 8 podcast. \u201cThey gaslight you, they manipulate you, they promote narratives \u2014 and the only one who is not doing that is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’\u201d \u2022 Commentary and video:<\/p>\n
\ud83d\udcf0BIG NEWS!\ud83d\udcf0<\/p>\n
Did you hear? @joerogan has endorsed @RobertKennedyJr for President!! This is huge!<\/p>\n
The Joe Rogan Experience is the most popular podcast in the WORLD, averaging about 11 million views per episode. <\/p>\n
In this episode, he says about Kennedy:<\/p>\n
\u201cI am a fan. He\u2019s the\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/ToYDH2gV9c<\/p>\n
\u2014 Moms for RFK Jr (@moms4rfkjr) August 9, 2024<\/p>\n
I would have expected to see a formal endorsement on Rogan\u2019s Twitter feed. Am I missing a more appropriate venue?<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Syndemics<\/p>\n
\u201cI am in earnest \u2014 I will not equivocate \u2014 I will not excuse \u2014 I will not retreat a single inch \u2014 AND I WILL BE HEARD.\u201d \u2013William Lloyd Garrison<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); \u201cIowa COVID-19 Tracker\u201d (in IA, but national data). \u201cInfection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts\u201d (especially on hospitalization by city).<\/p>\n
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 \u201cCOVID\u201d in the subject line. Thank you!<\/p>\n
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\u2019Alene; 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).<\/p>\n
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).<\/p>\n
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux us\u00e9es); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).<\/p>\n
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). <\/p>\n
Stay safe out there!<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Celebrity Watch<\/p>\n
Of course none of the Olympic delegations shared information, so while we may \u201clive with Covid\u2019 (or not) we are not and cannot \u201clearn to live with Covid\u201d:<\/p>\n
Would also be interesting to learn how many knowingly competed (and exposed others) and if they took any specific actions to protect themselves or others when they knew they were positive. This could\u2019ve been (and still can be) a great learning opportunity on \u201cliving with Covid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Jerome Adams (@JeromeAdamsMD) August 8, 2024<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts<\/p>\n
LEGEND<\/p>\n
1) \u2605 for charts new today; all others are not updated.<\/p>\n
2) For a full-size\/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and \u201copen image in new tab.\u201d<\/p>\n
NOTES<\/p>\n
[1] (CDC) This week\u2019s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Keeps spreading.<\/p>\n
[2] (CDC) Last week\u2019s wastewater map.<\/p>\n
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular.<\/p>\n
[4] (ER) Worth noting Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.<\/p>\n
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Leveling off. Doesn\u2019t 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.)<\/p>\n
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.<\/p>\n
[7] (Walgreens) An optimist would see a peak.<\/p>\n
[8] (Cleveland) Slowing.<\/p>\n
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn\u2019t even run back to 1\/21\/23, as it used to, but now starts 1\/1\/24. There\u2019s also no way to adjust the time range. CDC really doesn\u2019t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that\u2019s why the shape of the curve has changed.<\/p>\n
[10] (Travelers: Variants) It\u2019s rumored that there\u2019s a new variant in China, XDV.1, but it\u2019s not showing up here.<\/p>\n
[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.<\/p>\n
[12] Deaths low, ED up.<\/p>\n
Stats Watch<\/p>\n
There are no official statistics of interest today.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Manufacturing: Moe Tkacik whaling on Boeing again:<\/p>\n
Boeing’s program, producing the upper stage of a rocket designed to send heavy cargo to the moon, is 4 years late & a basket case bc, NASA says, the company doesn’t have enough competent aerospace workers.
(I know what you’re thinking: They killed them all?)
Well, that and.. pic.twitter.com\/VDSxyfRUBU<\/p>\n
\u2014 moe tkacik (@moetkacik) August 9, 2024<\/p>\n
Yikes!<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s Fear & Greed Index: 24 Exreme Fear (previous close: 24 Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 27 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 9 at 1:17:45 PM ET.<\/p>\n
The Conservatory<\/p>\n
\u201cActually listening to 10cc\u201d [Crooked Timber]. \u201cOnce you know my age my musical tastes as a teenager are very easy to guess\u2026. But I love a lot of the music now in which I had no interest at all at the time. When I notice a band is playing nearby that I am curious about, and whose members I suspect might be on or near their last legs, I often go, usually taking at least one of my children with me. So last week it was the turn of my son to accompany me to see 10cc\u2026. Seeing them, on their first US tour in 47 years, I discovered they are nothing like I thought. As presumably all of their fans and everyone else who was actually paying attention in the 70\u2019s know, they\u2019re basically an extremely sophisticated comic song band\u2026 Even their biggest hit [1], the one song that even I know by heart, sounded so different live. I\u2019ve always assumed its at best a sad song about self-deception with a little cruelty thrown in, but live, in context, I got the feeling that not only does the subject know perfectly well that he\u2019s in love but that she knows it too, and he knows that she knows it, both of them are happy about it, and the song is actually an exercise in elaborate Gricean implicature.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0OK, OK. Gricean Implicature. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: \u201c\u201dImplicature\u201d denotes either (i) the act of meaning or implying one thing by saying something else, or (ii) the object of that act. Implicatures can be determined by sentence meaning or by conversational context, and can be conventional (in different senses) or unconventional. Figures of speech such as metaphor and irony provide familiar examples, as do loose use and damning with faint praise. Implicature serves a variety of goals: communication, maintaining good social relations, misleading without lying, style, and verbal efficiency. Knowledge of common forms of implicature is acquired along with one\u2019s native language. Conversational implicatures have become one of the principal subjects of pragmatics.\u201d And no wonder! More: \u201cH. P. Grice developed an influential theory to explain and predict conversational implicatures, and describe how they arise and are understood\u2026. Grice (1975: 26\u201330) postulated a general Cooperative Principle and four maxims specifying how to be cooperative. It is common knowledge, he asserted, that people generally follow these rules for efficient communication\u2026. Grice viewed these not as arbitrary conventions, but as instances of general rules governing rational, cooperative behavior. For example, if Jane is helping Kelly build a house, she will hand Kelly a hammer rather than a tennis racket (relevance), more than one nail when several are needed (quantity), and straight nails rather than bent ones (quality); she will do all this quickly and efficiently (manner).\u201d \u2022 See, e.g., Luke 11:10-12. Now consider oppo (or, as Democrats like to put it, \u201cJoin the conversation!\u201d).<\/p>\n
Zeitgeist Watch<\/p>\n
\u201cHow to read a riot\u201d [Financial Times]. \u201c[S]ince the French gilets jaunes movement began attacking police and luxury stores in 2018, we have been in an era of leaderless crowds. Just as the internet cut out high-street travel agents, it is cutting politicians out of riots. Donald Trump did incite supporters to attack the Capitol in Washington on January 6 2021, \u2018but he wasn\u2019t the driving force behind the riots,\u2019 says Julia Ebner, counter-extremism researcher at Oxford university. Nowadays, social media influencers do the driving. Ebner says these riots have united the usually \u2018splintered\u2019 online far right, from misogynist Andrew Tate through Islamophobe Tommy Robinson to the nationalist Patriotic Alternative. It\u2019s as if the far-right internet has materialised on English high streets. Proud rioters posting videos of their exploits spread the contagion\u2026. Another constant: riots peak in summer, when it\u2019s nice to be outside at night\u2026. And riots both require and build group identity. People tend to riot with people they feel connected to. \u2026 When people argue about the aims of riots, there are typically two rival theories, which are doing battle again this time. One theory is that rioters are mindless \u201criffraff\u201d who must be punished. The other is that they are rational actors with grievances that must be addressed. The \u2018riffraff\u2019 and \u2018rational actor\u2019 theories are constant, but who espouses them depends on the nature of the riot. In 2011, when many British rioters were poor non-white people, conservatives called them riffraff while the left defended them. Now that white rioters are attacking Muslims, the roles of prosecutor and defender are reversed.\u201d \u2022 What I noticed on the videos was a particular set to the body, leading forward as if eagerly, and a faster walk. No smiling. Numerous people headed in the same direction, all separate individuals, but all leaning forward at the same angle, walking at the same pace.<\/p>\n
News of the Wired<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Indigenous Communities Preserving the Ancient Art of Roasting Agave\u201d [Atlas Obscura]. \u201cThe roasting pit didn\u2019t look like much yet: a pile of dirt, hiding the roasting agave beneath. Roy explained the roasting process to me. Traditionally, Cahuilla men set out in the spring to agave-harvesting grounds, and would dig and reuse a pit at the site of collection. The roasting was done at the collection site since the agave stands were often more than five miles away from a village. They\u2019d roast 50 to 100 agave hearts at once. The pit was lined with rocks, tightly fitted together, and then a large fire\u2014Roy\u2019s team used oak\u2014was built on top. According to the Malki publication Stalking the Wild Agave: A Southern California Food and Fiber Tradition by Deborah Dozier, the fire burned until \u2018the hearthstones glowed red and a thick bed of hardwood coals had been created.\u2019 The men would cover the coals with another layer of rock, followed by a layer of fresh agave leaves. Then agave hearts went in and were covered with more agave leaves. Historically, the pit was covered with fronds from native fan palms and then sand. Today, it\u2019s covered with corrugated metal panels and old carpet under a top layer of a foot of dirt. ;The roasting tamed the agave so that it could be taken home, soft and submissive, calorically concentrated, wrapped in leaves and packed in agave-fiber nets, with the thorny tips, excess water, unusable fibers, and bitter leaves left behind,\u2019 Dozier concludes.\u201d \u2022 The Malki Museum on the Morongo Reservation (near Banning, CA) sounds like it would be worth a visit.<\/p>\n
Revised London Tube map:<\/p>\n
This is the correction thread.<\/p>\n
Thanks for all who sent corrections, apologies if I missed anything, it’s a bit crazy down there. This is Version 2b of the map, with everything I am aware of fixed. If you find anything else, please comment here. Revisions will be posted here. pic.twitter.com\/yoluJpAGMN<\/p>\n
\u2014 Tube Map Central (@TubeMapCentral) August 8, 2024<\/p>\n
Who knew London was radial?<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
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 TH:<\/p>\n
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TH writes: \u201cThe Sherman Library and Gardens did not label this little bush with the interesting leaves and the profusion of bright pink flowers, but I think they\u2019d line my driveway nicely.\u201d Or a nice garden path. Readers?<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. Material here is Lambert\u2019s, and does not express the views of the Naked Capitalism site. If you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn\u2019t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I\u2019m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for three or four days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:<\/p>\n
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