2:00PM Water Cooler 12/18/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Northern Mockingbird, Southards Pond Park, Suffolk, New York, United States. “Three song bouts. Singing from the roof of a house adjacent to the park. Mimicry includes Belted Kingfisher, Northern Flicker, and Carolina Wren.” “Bouts!”

In Case You Might Miss…

1. Warren v. Musk.
2. Democrat gerontocrats
3. Mangione charged with terrorism.
4. Bird flu, the first severe case.

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

Trump Transition

Warren asks for conflict-of-interest rules covering Musk” [The Hill]. • She’s right on the merits, of course. How is an oligarch not conflicted, by definition, since they, by their actions or non-actions, are capable of affecting the entire economy? Elon responds:

Elon: “My platform is a legitimate news source! It’s legitimater than all those so-called ‘legacy media’ outlets!”

Also Elon: “Hey look at the insulting picture I made with my platform! Senator Warren is Pocahontas, har har! 🤣🤣 Please give me attention! 😭😭” https://t.co/Qt0UcM642g

— Lee Crawford (@Vampire337) December 17, 2024

A brutally obvious ad hom, of course. Tactically, however, it’s highly unfortunate that the Democrat standard-bearer on Elon’s oligarch-style conflicts is the sort of DEI-beneficiary guaranteed to get every conservative knee jerking:

Back in 1996, a spokesman for Harvard Law School rebutted claims that the school had no minority women on the faculty by noting that Elizabeth Warren was Native American pic.twitter.com/7zGjXAlQLY

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) December 18, 2024

And:

“The Texas bar registration card is significant, among other reasons, because it removes any doubt that Warren directly claimed the identity.”https://t.co/IHV47Q1LZY

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) December 18, 2024

We went over all this back in 2016, when the unimpeachably high-minded quondam Republican Warren was stabbing Sanders in the back — not that I’m bitter — but suffice to say that one is only a Cherokee — the tribe to which Warren claimed to belong — if the tribe admits you, and Warren was never admitted. Warren gives every appearance of having climbed to her eminence at Harvard Law School on their (non-white) backs, exactly what inflames, say, half the country and distracts from the legitimate issue Warren raises. Too bad the Democrats can’t do better in their spokespersons, but here we are.

* * *

“The upcoming GOP assault on Social Security” [Public Notice]. “During all three of his presidential campaigns, Trump distanced himself from efforts to gut Social Security — sort of. As with so many topics, however, he has not been particularly concerned with consistency. In March of this year, Trump let slip on CNBC that he just might be convinced to go after the social safety net, stating, ‘There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting.’ He then went on a marginally coherent “weave,” thereby managing to avoid addressing the implications of his statement…. Soon after winning the election, Trump tasked Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and their pseudo government agency titled “DOGE” (after a crypto currency that had been started as a joke) with cutting as much as $2 trillion of annual spending from the federal budget. Ramaswamy initially appeared to deny that Social Security would be touched, asserting that “program integrity” would be DOGE’s sole focus, and adding that changes in benefits would be a matter for Congress to decide. Yet, for two reasons, there was far less to that assurance than meets to eye. First, it has always been the case that Congress will have to vote in favor of any proposal to gut entitlement programs. That is because Social Security and Medicare comprise “mandatory” spending, which is compelled by statute. And secondly, as a matter of financial fact, the kind of drastic austerity measures that Trump’s cronies are proposing will necessarily involve massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or both. That is because approximately 60 percent of the federal budget is composed of mandatory spending, while 10 percent is devoted to debt service. Of the remaining 30 percent, half is defense spending, leaving only 15 percent that comprises the entirety of non-defense, discretionary spending.” • Left to their own devices, the Republicans, augmented by oligarchs, will do what they always do (if Trump allows it, but who knows). It is to be hoped that the centrist dipshits who were pushing a “Grand Bargain” in the Obama years don’t decide to join with DOGE and “save Social Security.”

Democrats en déshabillé

“Pelosi Won. The Democratic Party Lost” [The New Republic]. “Fresh off hip replacement surgery, Nancy Pelosi, 84, secured another victory. House Democrats on Tuesday afternoon decided that 74 year old Gerry Connolly—who announced his throat cancer diagnosis in November—will serve as ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, besting 35 year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a closed-door caucus vote. ‘ said Virginia Democrat Don Beyer, a Connolly ally.” More: “In other democracies, the leadership of parties that have endured humiliating defeats like the one Democrats saw in November—or even just regular defeats—resign. That kicks off a process by which members determine a new, ideally more successful direction, represented by different people. But the Democratic Party isn’t really a ‘party’ of the sort that exists in other democracies, with memberships and official constituencies, like unions, who have some say over how it’s governed. Members mostly make decisions based on their own interests rather than to drive some shared, democratically-decided agenda forward [“the beautiful tent that is the Democratic Party“]. That’s part of what’s so depressing about the Oversight Committee ordeal for the couple dozen journalists and political junkies who pay attention to that sort of thing. Pelosi and the old guard’s continued opposition to younger talent seems breathtakingly counter-productive in the face of the Democratic party’s numerous challenges right now.” And: ” If the Democrats have a future, its inspiration will come from outside the bounds of its own fiefdoms and sclerotic internal processes. It will come, for example, from unions that cultivate leaders who can genuinely speak to working class voters. It will come social movements that build momentum for populist ideas that haven’t been poll tested into bland, business-friendly mush. At the very least, those things can outlive Pelosi and the old guard.” • ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But I don’t agree that “members mostly make decisions based on their own interests.” If that were true, there would be no need for party whips.

* * *

Democrats’ Five Strategies for Coping With Trump 2.0″ [Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine]. “Some Democrats are so thoroughly impressed by the current power of the MAGA movement they are choosing to surrender to it in significant respects. The prime example is Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the onetime fiery populist politician who is now becoming conspicuous in his desire to admit his party’s weaknesses and snuggle up to the new regime…. It’s probably germane to Fetterman’s conduct that he will be up for reelection in 2028, a presidential-election year in a state Trump carried on November 5.” And: “Other Democrats are being much more selectively friendly to Trump, searching for ‘common ground’ on issues where they believe he will be cross-pressured by his wealthy backers and more conventional Republicans. Like Fetterman, these Democrats — including Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — tend to come from the progressive wing of the party and have longed chafed at the centrist economic policies advanced by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and, to some extent, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They’ve talked about strategically encouraging Trump’s ‘populist’ impulses on such issues as credit-card interest and big-tech regulation, partly as a matter of forcing the new president and his congressional allies to put up or shut up. So the idea is to push off a discredited Democratic Establishment, at least on economic issues, and either accomplish things for working-class voters in alliance with Trump or prove the hollowness of his ‘populism.’… At the other end of the spectrum, some centrist Democrats are pushing off what they perceive as a discredited progressive ascendancy in the party, especially on culture-war issues and immigration…. From a strategic point of view, these militant centrists appear to envision a 2028 presidential campaign that will take back the voters Biden won in 2020 and that Harris lost this year.” But finally: “Historical precedents indicate very high odds that Democrats can flip the House in 2026, bringing to a relatively quick end to any Republican legislative steamroller on Trump’s behalf and signaling good vibes for 2028.” • So, stand pat.

“What Happened to the Democratic Party?” (review) [The New Repunblic]. This caught my eye, on rival pollsters Stanley Greenberg and Douglas Schoen: “For [historian Timothy Shenk in Left Adrift, these two men—bitter rivals for clout and clients in the retooling Democratic Party of the Clinton era—understood better than many traditional New Dealers in the party’s leadership caste that a massive, if slow-moving, political realignment was under way: the party’s abandonment of its traditional working-class base and its embrace of a professional, highly educated elite…. Greenberg, who came of political age during Eugene McCarthy’s incendiary anti-war presidential campaign in 1968, accepted this political shift as it gained traction in the Reagan era. But he did so from a defensive posture, seeking to persuade candidates and clients to echo vintage Democratic populist appeals in a last-ditch bid to arrest the dealignment of working-class voters from the party. Meanwhile, Schoen, a scion of Manhattan privilege, cheerfully welcomed the shift as the new consensus delimiting future Democratic agendas, policy goals, and political campaigns…. Schoen, for his part, had no misgivings about the party giving up on the working class, white or not. An early and enthusiastic adopter of Margaret Thatcher’s famous pronouncement on the neoliberal dispensation—”There is no alternative”—Schoen and his consulting partner, Mark Penn (who would later serve as chairman of Hillary Clinton’s disastrous 2008 presidential campaign), built up an influential and wildly profitable Beltway franchise for political and corporate clients that also advanced their own political preferences.” • There’s actually some analysis in the piece that treats “the working class” as dynamic….

“The Dead Hand of the Democratic Consultant Class” [The Nation]. “Despite appearances, this at times bruising argument isn’t really about the past at all. What it’s really about is the future, and whether the Democratic Party needs the kind of root-and-branch reform that would allow it to ignore the siren song of the consultant class, which has now led the party to two disastrous defeats. Or whether, to borrow a term from British politics, all that is required for victory is ‘one more heave’—running the same campaign, but with a bit more vigor than last time. That, in essence, was the message a shockingly unrepentant David Plouffe and his colleagues offered as guests on Pod Save America: Give us the chance to do it all over again in 2028 and we will. Anyone even tempted to credit these grifters should listen to Plouffe’s October episode, ‘Why You Shouldn’t Panic About the Polls.’” • I think that battle is over; “one more heave” it is (absent active intervention by some insurgent force, for which or whom I scan the horizon in vain. That is the message of AOC’s humiliation by Pelosi; and whoever gets annointed by DNC chair will signal victory for the “dead hands.”

Realignment and Legitimacy

“How America Invented the Red State” [Tarence Ray, The Nation]. Of the Trillbillies. Worth reading in full (quotes Frank and Bageant). This caught my eye: “The status of white rural workers is fixed not only in terms of class but in terms of geography, their intransigence rooted in both the soil and the blood. Rather than being in need of transformative social welfare or multiracial working-class solidarity, red-staters are ‘an anchor dragging down the rest of the country.’ Whiteness becomes a kind of dematerializing solvent for all social questions, an eternal and ethereal substance moving throughout history, the persistence of which can never be defeated. It was a position very much consistent with the calcified, end-of-the-road liberalism of the Biden years. The material and social reality could not be overcome, and so the people themselves were to blame. The kernel for this thinking went back to the way the federal government, under both Trump and Biden, handled the pandemic. Responsibility for not spreading the coronavirus was placed on individuals, morally as well as logistically, rather than on the government—at the exact moment that the government expanded its social safety net to adjust for the economic disruptions of lockdown. This safety net, arrived at by an obvious contradiction, was a boon to rural areas in terms of employment, municipal revenue, and administrative capacity. It was not lost on anyone when that safety net was allowed to expire under a liberal president.”

“Luigi Mangione Charged With Terrorism in Killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO” [New York Magazine]. “Luigi Mangione was charged with first-degree murder and second-degree murder as an act of terrorism, among other counts, in an indictment announced by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg on Tuesday.” Yes, that Alvin Bragg, who no doubt has the Governor’s mansion in his sights.

“The Wildest Charges in Accused UHC Shooter’s Indictment” [The New Republic]. “It’s unclear how exactly Mangione’s alleged crime was intended to ‘influence the policy of a unit of government,’ which companies such as UnitedHealthcare are not, or ‘intimidate’ the civilian population. Rather, Mangione’s alleged act appeared to have been planned to target a specific class of individuals who profit exorbitantly off the suffering of the civilian population. ‘The ruling class is treating killing one of their own, with the motive being related to the evils of our health care system, as a fundamentally different act than if you or I were to be murdered,’ wrote journalist J.P. Hill on X Tuesday.”

“The mechanized hum of another world” [Closed Form]. “Way back at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution that started humanity down this disastrous path, a guy by the name of Friedrich Engels (who is very familiar to anyone that has been reading this newsletter) coined a neat little term to describe a phenomenon particular to the emerging industrial-technical organization of life. The term, which will also be extremely familiar to readers of this newsletter or Nate’s, is social murder. Via a long analysis of the Marxian concept of ‘mute compulsion’ elaborated recently in a book by Søren Mau (and covered by yours truly in this post), we can show straightforwardly that social murder issues from what Ted Kaczynski might call the technological organization of society, and which I would call the ‘rules of the game’ of capitalism itself. Through working on this newsletter, I have started to theorize social murder as a subcategory of structural violence, one that can serve as a theoretical basis for many rather adrift concepts in public health such as so-called ‘health disparities.’ Social murder helps us describe actually-existing population health and ground it conceptually in a capitalist political economy, be it global or national (or local). One of these aspects of population health that social murder helps us make sense of is health insurance – in fact, I am planning a whole post about health insurance, qualitatively, as a social determinant of health, so stay tuned for that.” • Important! (Two questions to interrogate “social murder” with: Who and what are actually murdered? And how does this differ from the operation of Rule #2, the default setting?)

The zeitgeist:

One thing I haven’t heard spoken about regarding Chris Rock’s recent SNL appearance: At the beginning of his monologue, Rock said “We got Luigi”. Not one person clapped. He then repeated it. Still no one clapped.

The political and media establishment really has no idea how to…

— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) December 18, 2024

Here is the indictment (PDF) “THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK against LUIGI MANGIONE“. From the first paragraph:

This language is taken from New York State Penal Law § 490.25, “CRIME OF TERRORISM.” but I’m having a hard time understanding it. From my helpful annotations:

[1] Is a health insurance company a “civilian population”? If not, who or what is the civilian population intimidated or coerced? The class of all health insurance CEOs? The class of all CEOs? The ruling class? (NOTE: I do not know the meaning of the word “population” in law, and suspect it’s different from the concept of “class” as a political economist would be it.)

[2], [3] Or is a health insurance company a “unit of government”? Surely not, unless “unit” is a term of art. But if not, what is? Congress, in passing health insurance reform? More ingeniously, the organs of state security, who will now be “intimidated” into devising measures to deal with the menance?

“D.A. Bragg Announces Murder Indictment Of Luigi Mangione” (Press Release) [Manhattan District Attorney’s Office]. Here is Bragg’s timeline:

According to court documents and statements made on the record, MANGIONE arrived at Port Authority on a bus on November 24, 2024, and checked in at the HI New York City Hostel on the Upper West Side. MANGIONE used a fake New Jersey ID under the name Mark Rosario. MANGIONE extended his stay at the Hostel multiple times.

On the morning of December 4th, MANGIONE left the Hostel at 5:34 a.m. and travelled to Midtown using an e-bike.

Between 5:52 a.m. and 6:45 a.m., MANGIONE walked near and around the Hilton Hotel. At approximately 6:15 a.m. he purchased a water bottle and granola bars at the Starbucks at 1290 6th Avenue.

Between approximately 6:38 a.m. and 6:44 a.m., MANGIONE stood against a wall on the north side of West 54th Street across from the Hilton, fully masked with his hood up.

At 6:45 a.m., MANGIONE crossed the street to the Hilton Hotel and, armed with a 9-millimeter 3D-printed ghost gun equipped with a silencer, [1].

MANGIONE then fled northeast on 54th Street and took an e-bike uptown. He eventually got into a taxi and was dropped off at West 178th Street and Amsterdam Avenue and then fled the state.

Mr. Thompson was transported to Mt. Sinai Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 7:12 a.m.

Two of the discharged shell casings had the words “DENY” and “DEPOSE” written on them, and the word “DELAY” was written on a bullet, all found at the scene.

On December 9th, MANGIONE was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after being spotted at a local McDonalds. When he was arrested, police recovered a 9-millimeter handgun with a 3D-printed receiver, two ammunition magazines, multiple live cartridges, a homemade silencer, and the fake New Jersey ID used at the hostel.

[1] From the video, Bragg has the order wrong. First the leg, then the knee. This would be important of Mangione’s defense is that he only intended to kneecap Thompson, as Yves urges here.

Lambert here: America, being a gun-humpingloving country, has a rich tradition and body of law centering on self-defense via firearms. Without lining up my speculation with the facts of the case (for example, it’s hard to see how shooting someone in the back fits in to “stand your ground), what would self-defense against social murder look like, if it were to be reduced to legal doctrine? Let me propose a thought experiment. Case A: Suppose (legal) person HI (for health insurance) has a machine gun, and (natural person) p has a handgun. If HI fires its machine gun at p, is p justified in firing back in self-defense? Surely so. (I assume the analogy between denying care and firing a machine gun is clear.) Case B: Let us suppose we interpose a sheet of paper between HI and p. HI again fires their machine gun at p but through the paper. Is p justified in firing back? Surely so. Case C: Suppose that we leave the paper in place, and introduce a complex Rube Goldberg device between HI’s trigger finger, and the trigger of the machine gun. HI’s finger twitches, the Rube Goldberg device pulls the trigger, the machine gun fires, and again the bullets go through the paper. Again, is p justified in firing back? This case seems not so clear, but why exactly? (I assume the analogy between the health insurance industry’s claims denial process and a Rube Goldberg device is clear.) What is it about the level of indirection in Case C that separates it from Cases A and B? Comments from lawyers welcome!

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

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 (wastewater); 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, KidDoc, 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!

Transmission: H5N1

<“Health officials say Louisiana patient is first severe bird flu case in US” [Associated Press]. “A person in Louisiana has the first severe illness caused by bird flu in the U.S., health officials said Wednesday. The patient had been in contact with sick and dead birds in backyard flocks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Agency officials didn’t immediately detail the person’s symptoms…. The CDC confirmed the Louisiana infection on Friday, but did not announce it until Wednesday. It’s also the first U.S. human case linked to exposure to a backyard flock, the agency said…. Did the Louisiana patient have pre-existing conditions that made him or her more susceptible to illness? Is the person on a ventilator? The CDC deferred those and other questions about the patient to state health officials, who did not immediately respond.” • Because of course.

“CDC Confirms First Severe Case of H5N1 Bird Flu in the United States” (press release) [CDC]. “This case underscores that, in addition to affected commercial poultry and dairy operations, wild birds and backyard flocks also can be a source of exposure….. This means that backyard flock owners, hunters and other bird enthusiasts should also take precautions. The best way to prevent H5 bird flu is to avoid exposure whenever possible. Infected birds shed avian influenza A viruses in their saliva, mucous, and feces. Other infected animals may shed avian influenza A viruses in respiratory secretions and other bodily fluids (e.g., in unpasteurized cow milk or ‘raw milk’).” • Avoid contact, use PPE, don’t touch contaminated surfaces or materials. NOTE I am not recalling a case of bird flu transmitted by raw milk, repellent and destructive though I find the raw milk grift.

Testing and Tracking: Wastewater

Some modelers are calling a winter Covid “surge” right now. Some remarks. First, I don’t use graphs like those below because I don’t regard them as actionable; I use the CDC maps because they are better able to answer questions like “Should I go to see Grandma in Wichita this Christmas?” or “Should I take that ski vacation in Colorado in January?” Further, my Covid protocols are constant; I wouldn’t vary them by the fluctuations in the graph in any case. Further, I object to calling a surge before it’s visible:

You will notice that the “surge” in this chart is all projection. Well, I’ve demonstrated in the past that CDC projections aren’t necessarily reliable; and I don’t view other models as any better; see Closed Form. So I would advocate reserving the term “surge” for an actually oberved event of some scale, and not a projection so far scaled to a ripple based on past events, as shown in this brutally and shamefully truncated CDC chart:

That Scranton Joe; he can surge with the best of ’em!

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

[1] (CDC) Seeing a little more red, but nothing new at major international hubs. Interestingly, Calculated Risk is watching wastewater too.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.

[4] (ED) A little uptick.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Leveled out.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.

[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.

[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.

[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.

[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.

[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.

Stats Watch

There are no official statistics of interest today.

Manufacturing: “Boeing says it has resumed 767, 777 wide-body production” [Reuters]. “Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab said late on Tuesday it has resumed production of all airplane programs that had been halted by a machinists’ strike in the Pacific Northwest. The planemaker confirmed last week it restarted production of its best-selling 737 MAX jetliner in early December – about a month after the end of a seven-week strike by 33,000 factory workers – and said it has now resumed wide-body programs in Everett, Washington that were impacted.

Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Stephanie Pope said in a social media post on Tuesday the company had now resumed production across its 737, 767, and 777/777X airplane programs. ‘We have taken time to ensure all manufacturing teammates are current on training and certifications, while positioning inventory at the optimal levels for smooth production,’ she added.”

Manufacturing: “Boeing Starliner astronauts will return to Earth in March 2025 after new NASA, SpaceX delay” [Space.com]. “The astronaut duo who flew the first-ever crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner capsule will have to wait a little longer to rejoin us on Earth…. The new delay will bring Wilmore and Williams’ time in space to around nine months in total — far longer than the 10 days or so their mission was originally expected to last. Though unexpectedly long, nine months is not terribly outlandish; other NASA astronauts have stayed on the ISS for far longer.”

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 50 Neutral (previous close: 51 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 51 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Dec 18 at 2:43:11 PM ET.

Mystery Drones

“The Great Drone Panic of 2024” [New York Magazine]. “Public hysterias have always surfaced from time to time, in the U.S. and everywhere else that humans happen to be. And the drones were fun, at first. On Reddit, r/UFOs is buzzing with activity as users concoct government conspiracies and dream of alien incursions from outer space. But there’s always an underbelly to contagions of this sort. Consider the great drone panic of 2024 alongside other trends, and it looks like a sign of deeper social dysfunction. America is fearful, even paranoid; it has just reelected Trump, a vengeful figure who admires dictators and strongmen and seeks retribution against liberals and the broader world order they represent. Conspiratorial thinking is not a new phenomenon in the U.S., but it is a hallmark of the MAGA movement, and Trump’s rise empowers a class of grifters who prey on ignorance and fear.” • NJ is, of course, a Blue state.

News of the Wired

“Why do people believe true things?” [Conspicuous Cognition]. “There never was a “truth” era. The dominant world religions are vast repositories of fake news and rumours; conspiracy theories are as old as humanity; and false, cartoonish, and biased narratives and ideologies are the norm throughout human history. However, it is also because I think locating modern epistemic problems in ‘misinformation’ and related buzzwords is explanatorily shallow. Once you appreciate that the truth is not the default—that it is an exceptional, fragile, improbable achievement—it should shift how you approach social epistemology. First, it should encourage a conscious rejection of naive realism. The truth is not self-evident…. Second, it should make us understand that lies, conspiracy theories, misinformation, bias, pseudo-science, superstition and so on are not alien perversions of the public sphere. They are the epistemic state of nature that society will revert to in the absence of fragile—and highly contingent—cultural and institutional achievements. Given this, the real epistemic challenge for the twenty-first century is not to combat misinformation, except insofar as doing this helps us achieve a deeper, more fundamental goal: maintaining and improving our best epistemic norms and institutions, and winning trust in, and conformity to, them.” • So, how are we doing on that?

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 SV:

SV writes: “Bubbler on African Basil.” Not sure I understand “bubbler.” This is 2:00pm, not 4:20.

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