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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Spectacled Finch, Seri Paya, North-West Frontier, Pakistan.
* * *
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
The Constitutional Order
“Trump foes test insurrection theory in legal case to block him from 2024 ballot” [Washington Times]. “The trial, which kicked off Monday in Denver, tests the novel theory that Mr. Trump should be blocked from the 2024 primary and general election ballots in Colorado because of his actions after the 2020 presidential election…. In Colorado, the case was brought by six plaintiffs identified as Republican and independent primary voters and led by the left-wing activist group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. They said Mr. Trump led an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of angry protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol while lawmakers were certifying Mr. Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. ‘Trump incited a violent mob to attack our Capitol, to stop the peaceful transfer of power under our Constitution,’ Eric Olson, an attorney for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, argued in an opening statement peppered with footage of the riot. ‘We are here because Trump claims, after all that, he has the right to be president again. But our Constitution, or shared charter for our nation, says he cannot do so.”• Which is why Biden’s Justice Department charged Trump with insurrection. Oh, wait…. But seriously, I understand the theory of the case. But do we really want state election officials of one party throwing candidates of another party off the ballot? And do we really want Secretaries of State and election officials generally making what are in essence prosecutorial decisions?
“Trial begins in lawsuit attempting to block Donald Trump from Colorado’s 2024 presidential primary ballot [Colorado Sun]. “Dozens of cases citing Section Three of the 14th Amendment have been filed in recent months, but the ones in Colorado and Minnesota seem the most important, according to legal experts. That’s because they were filed by two liberal groups with significant legal resources. They also targeted states with clear, swift processes for challenges to candidates’ ballot qualifications.”
“Ban Trump from 2024 ballot? Why courts should rule he can’t serve as president again” [Laurence H. Tribe and Dennis Aftergut, USA Today]. The cases in Colorado and Minnesota “have been brought under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment: ‘No person shall … hold any office … under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath …[1] to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.’” • Yes, that ellipsis is in the text. I have helpfully underlined the, er, original text that Tribe and Aftergut elided: “as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State.” As readers know, the question of whether the President is “an officer of the United States” is contested. But Larry, Larry, Larry: You just left that part out! That’s sheer dishonest lawyering. Unsurprisingly, I might add.
“The 14th Amendment Case to Bar Trump From the Ballot Is Politics At Its Worst” [Newsweek]. “Think about it: If the 14th Amendment is used to bar Trump, what’s to stop Republicans from using the 14th Amendment to disqualify anyone who endorsed or condoned riots following events like George Floyd’s killing? This would inject an unprecedented level of subjectivity into the electoral process and potentially suppress legitimate political dialogue.” • A debater’s point that may resonate with some. The wording of the amendment is what will “stop Republicans,” since the Amendment does not apply to “anyone.”
Biden Administration
Lovely:
The White House just compared “anti-Israel protesters” — the phrase used by the Fox News reporter in his question — to the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville. pic.twitter.com/t9oEu6YyOe
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 30, 2023
“Listen to Black women.” Especially the pro-apartheid ones!
2024
Time for the Countdown Clock!
Only six more days until a full year to election day!
* * *
* * *“Biden’s Primary Challenges Are Much More Serious Than DC Insiders Think” [The Nation]. “It is true that US Representative Dean Phillips, the 54-year-old Minnesota Democrat who on Friday formally launched what he admitted was a “last-minute campaign” against Biden, seems to be running primarily on none-too-subtle arguments that the incumbent is too old and too vulnerable to be handed the 2024 nomination. But Phillips is wealthy, he’s hired some skilled strategists and he’s wisely decided to gamble on the New Hampshire primary to test his appeal to “the exhausted majority” in a state where Biden’s name won’t be on the Democratic ballot.” • So, “the exhausted majority” trope made it through the filters tout suite. Interesting.
“Biden backers launch write-in campaign amid 2024 primary fight with New Hampshire” [USA Today]. “President Joe Biden’s supporters in New Hampshire launched a write-in campaign Monday morning aimed at winning the first-in-the-nation primary for the incumbent Democrat who declined to put his name on the ballot. Their website implores New Hampshire voters to join the ‘grassroots movement of Granite Staters who are pledging to stand up for our democracy by writing in Joe Biden for President in the New Hampshire primary in January 2024.’ ‘The fate of our democracy itself hangs in the balance in the 2024 election,’ the website says.” “Our democracy,” twice. Grassroots? Really? More: “New Hampshire is in a fight with the Democratic National Committee over its expected primary date, which has not been announced but is expected to take place in January. Biden did not file to appear on the state’s primary ballot, as a result, and Democrats backing his reelection bid went ahead with a planned write-in campaign on Monday instead.”
* * *
“3 Expert Shoemakers Say Ron DeSantis Is Probably Wearing Height Boosters” [Politico]. • Press now in full pulling-wings-off-flies mode.
* * *
“Virginia restores 3,400 to voting rolls, but questions remain” [Axios]. “Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has restored the voting rights of nearly 3,400 residents who were wrongly taken off the state’s voting rolls…. ‘We have no way to know if that 3,400 is actually correct,’ [Shawn Weneta, a policy strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia,] said. ‘When they acknowledged the mistake, they said it was only 270 people. Well three weeks later, they say it’s more than 10 times that number.’… Critics of Youngkin still have questions about how the voter purge happened and what they call a lack of communication from the governor’s office.”
“Big companies donate millions on Newsom’s behalf, raising concerns about corporate influence” [Los Angeles Times (Bill Brand)]. “With no limit on how much money can be donated by organizations or individuals at the behest of the governor, millions of dollars flowed in to prop up public services during the pandemic and fund Newsom’s favored programs…. The corporations say they were simply trying to help the state in a time of need. But no matter how noble the cause, critics fear the donations could allow corporations to hold more sway in state government. They noted many of the donors have other business before the governor, received no-bid government contracts over the last year or were seeking favorable appointments on important state boards, which they say creates the appearance of a pay-to-play system.” The jargon for these so-called donations is “behested payments.” More: “Google gave $7 million on April 9, 2020 in a behested donation to Newsom’s office for public health ads. Days later, Verily, the health-focused subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, was awarded an expanded no-bid contract for $13.1 million for coronavirus testing. Verily was ultimately paid more than $68 million for three testing services contracts before the state ended the agreements earlier this year.” • Verily, eh?
* * *
“The Third Party Wild Card” [Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball]. “None of these [third party] candidates, individually, would have a prayer of winning barring some truly incredible change in American politics, nor are they even guaranteed to be on the ballot everywhere. Collectively, though, the level of support they get will be interesting to monitor, and it may be that the third party vote ends up disproportionately hurting one of the major party nominees over the other, although that is not certain.” Handy chart:
Not a swing state among them….
Republican Funhouse
“EDITORIAL: New speaker on to something with debt commission” [Las Vegas Review-Journal]. “Speaker Johnson’s committee should conduct its business openly and consider a wide range of potential solutions to controlling the red ink — even those that are anathema to one party (tax hikes) or the other (spending cuts). It’s admittedly a long shot, but fostering vigorous discussion and debate on the debt may be the first step toward accepting and implementing solutions.” • You can bet there won’t be any MMT representatives on this “commission.”
Democrats en Déshabillé
Patient readers, it seems that people are actually reading the back-dated post! But I have not updated it, and there are many updates. So I will have to do that. –lambert
I have moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Party (“the Democrat Party is a rotting corpse that can’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated post, to which I will periodically add material, summarizing the addition here in a “live” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It turns out that defining the Democrat Party is, in fact, a hard problem. I do think the paragraph that follows is on point all the way back to 2016, if not before:
The Democrat Party is the political expression of the class power of PMC, their base (lucidly explained by Thomas Frank in Listen, Liberal!). It follows that the Democrat Party is as “unreformable” as the PMC is unreformable; if the Democrat Party did not exist, the PMC would have to invent it. If the Democrat Party fails to govern, that’s because the PMC lacks the capability to govern. (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” of course.) Second, all the working parts of the Party reinforce each other. Leave aside characterizing the relationships between elements of the Party (ka-ching, but not entirely) those elements comprise a network — a Flex Net? An iron octagon? — of funders, vendors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with assets in the press and the intelligence community.
Note, of course, that the class power of the PMC both expresses and is limited by other classes; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial model’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to mind. Suck up, kick down.
* * *
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Can public officials block you on social media? It’s up to the Supreme Court” [NPR]. • Making a market for moderation services?
“The Great Reordering” [Washington Monthly]. “Rather than speaking to Goldman Sachs, Biden spoke to autoworkers.” • The railroad workers didn’t fight for their contract in an election year. Anyhow, this article is worth a read. Perhaps a wee bit triumphalist.
#COVID19
“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
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, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: 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, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
* * *
Covid is Airborne
If we treated the air like a swimming pool:
Pools ask customers to stay away when they have a stomach bug.
And when they do, no one complains about crypto immunity debt, or freedom, or just a diarrhoea, or we all have to get it.
You just get asked to not spread the evil shit in your guts.
— tern (@1goodtern) October 28, 2023
Transmission
Happy holidays:
Here’s the danger of a Thanksgiving gathering in the U.S. (Nov 23). Many people are finalizing holiday plans now.
In a large family gathering of 15-20 people, there’s about a 25% chance someone would be infectious.
I am quite confident in these numbers.
5/ pic.twitter.com/FWKZQL88wJ
— Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA (@michael_hoerger) October 30, 2023
Infection
We will check back with Hoerger in a month:
PMC C0VID-19 Tracker, Oct 30, 2023
We’re at the onset of an 8th U.S. pandemic wave.
Today’s Numbers:🔹 1.27% (1 in 78) are infectious 🔹 >600,000 C0VID cases/day 🔹>30,000 #LongCovid cases/day
We will pass the late-summer wave’s peak in just over a month.
1/ pic.twitter.com/EUIa0Ea1Cm
— Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA (@michael_hoerger) October 30, 2023
“Something Awful”
Lambert here: I’m getting the feeling that the “Something Awful” might be a sawtooth pattern — variant after variant — that averages out to a permanently high plateau. Lots of exceptionally nasty sequelae, most likely deriving from immune dysregulation (says this layperson). To which we might add brain damage, including personality changes therefrom.
* * *
Elite Maleficence
More “Green Map” thinking. Idea: “Let’s just jigger the numbers:
Rather than address the growing crisis of an ongoing pandemic, not to mention those already disabled, the US Census is responding by changing the definition of disability.
And if they do so, the rate of disability as identified by the Census is slated to drop to 8%. (2/7)
— It’sME(Jaime) (@exceedhergrasp1) October 30, 2023
They write letters:
For additional information you can use, check out the disability researchers’ sample letter here:
Alt text continues in the follow-up tweets. pic.twitter.com/GvTNnJxyae
— It’sME(Jaime) (@exceedhergrasp1) October 30, 2023
Worth the clickthroughs to the images.
“Alberta doctors, nurses call on province for more transparency amid discrepancies in COVID-19 hospitalization data” [CTV]. “An internal Alberta Health Services document obtained by CTV News indicates that the number of patients hospitalized provincially with COVID-19 has surpassed 900, despite available public data revealing just a third of those numbers. As of Friday, the province’s respiratory virus dashboard(opens in a new tab) showed 320 hospitalizations for SARS-CoV-2, indicating the data was up-to-date as of Oct. 21. However, an internal document obtained by CTV News shows there were actually 898 COVID-19 patients province-wide as of Oct. 21, with an average of 912 COVID-19 patients in hospital over the previous seven days. The internal document also shows among major medical centres in Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge, 273 patients ended up testing positive for COVID while in hospital for something else as of Oct. 26. To have upwards of 900 hospitalizations for COVID-19 would mean that these types of hospitalizations have roughly doubled in about a month.” • Well, I never. This would never happen in the United States!
Jay, Martin, Suneptra, good job:
The number of diagnoses of neural system diseases in children aged 1-6 began to increase sharply about one year after the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) switched to a herd immunity strategy (August 25, 2021).2/x pic.twitter.com/k7q1gibeA6
— Ilkka Rauvola (@jukka235) October 23, 2023
* * *
Case Data
NOT UPDATED From BioBot wastewater data, October 30:
Lambert here: Cases leveling out to a high plateau wasn’t on my Bingo card!
Regional data:
Variants
NOT UPDATED From CDC, October 28:
Lambert here: Top of the leaderboard: HV.1, EG.5 a strong second, with FL.1.15.1 and XBB.1.1.16.6 trailing. No BA.2.86 (although that has showed up in CDC’s airport testing). Still a Bouillabaisse…
From CDC, October 14:
Lambert here: I sure hope the volunteers doing Pangolin, on which this chart depends, don’t all move on the green fields and pastures new (or have their access to facilities cut by administrators of ill intent).
CDC: “As of May 11, genomic surveillance data will be reported biweekly, based on the availability of positive test specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring every two weeks. 2. occurring twice a week; semiweekly.” Looks like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to worry about. Time will tell.
Covid Emergency Room Visits
NOT UPDATED From CDC NCIRD Surveillance, October 21:
Lambert here: Flattening? Only a week’s lag, so this may be our best current nationwide, current indicator until Verily gets its house in order (and working class-centric, since I would doubt the upper crust goes to the ER).
NOTE “Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period.” So not the entire pandemic, FFS (the implicit message here being that Covid is “just like the flu,” which is why the seasonal “rolling 52-week period” is appropriate for bothMR SUBLIMINAL I hate these people so much. Notice also that this chart shows, at least for its time period, that Covid is not seasonal, even though CDC is trying to get us to believe that it is, presumably so they can piggyback on the existing institutional apparatus for injections.
Hospitalization
Bellwether New York City, data as of October 31:
Hospitalization is leveling out, too. (I hate this metric because the lag makes it deceptive, although the hospital-centric public health establishment loves it, hospitalization and deaths being the only metrics that matter [snort]).
NOT UPDATED Here’s a different CDC visualization on hospitalization, nationwide, not by state, but with a date, at least. October 21:
Lambert here: “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates weekly for the previous MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Department Visits, Test Positivity) and weekly the following Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”. So where the heck is the update, CDC?
Positivity
From Walgreens, October 30:
1.3%. Increase. (It would be interesting to survey this population generally; these are people who, despite a tsunami of official propaganda and enormous peer pressure, went and got tested anyhow.)
NOT UPDATED From Cleveland Clinic, October 28:
Lambert here: Slight increase. I know this is just Ohio, but the Cleveland Clinic is good*, and we’re starved for data, so…. NOTE * Even if hospital infection control is trying to kill patients by eliminating universal masking with N95s.
NOT UPDATED From CDC, traveler’s data, October 9:
Down, albeit in the rear view mirror. And here are the variants for travelers:
Sudden big BA.2.86 appearance.
Deaths
NOT UPDATED Iowa COVID-19 Tracker, September 27:
Lambert here: The WHO data is worthless, so I replaced it with the Iowa Covid Data Tracker. Their method: “These data have been sourced, via the API from the CDC: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Conditions-Contributing-to-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Stat/hk9y-quqm. This visualization updates on Wednesday evenings. Data are provisional and are adjusted weekly by the CDC.” I can’t seem to get a pop-up that shows a total of the three causes (top right). Readers?
Total: 1,180,405 – 1,180,403 = 2 (!) (27 * 365 = 730 deaths per year, today’s YouGenicist™ number for “living with” Covid (quite a bit higher than the minimizers would like, though they can talk themselves into anything. If the YouGenicist™ metric keeps chugging along like this, I may just have to decide this is what the powers-that-be consider “mission accomplished” for this particular tranche of death and disease).
Excess Deaths
The Economist, October 27:
Lambert here: Based on a machine-learning model.
Stats Watch
Manufacturing: “United States Chicago PMI” [Trading Economics]. “The Chicago Business Barometer, also known as the Chicago PMI, fell marginally to 44 in October 2023 from 44.1 and below market forecasts of 45. The reading marked the 14th consecutive month of solid contraction in business activity in the Chicago region.”
* * *
Tech: “.US Harbors Prolific Malicious Link Shortening Service” [Krebs on Security]. “The top-level domain for the United States — .US — is home to thousands of newly-registered domains tied to a malicious link shortening service that facilitates malware and phishing scams, new research suggests. The findings come close on the heels of a report that identified .US domains as among the most prevalent in phishing attacks over the past year. Researchers at Infoblox say they’ve been tracking what appears to be a three-year-old link shortening service that is catering to phishers and malware purveyors. Infoblox found the domains involved are typically three to seven characters long, and hosted on bulletproof hosting providers that charge a premium to ignore any abuse or legal complaints. The short domains don’t host any content themselves, but are used to obfuscate the real address of landing pages that try to phish users or install malware…. .US is overseen by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an executive branch agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. But Uncle Sam has long outsourced the management of .US to various private companies, which have gradually allowed the United States’s top-level domain to devolve into a cesspool of phishing activity.” • On brand for the Empire of Lies, no?
Tech: “Here’s what Apple really means when it says ‘shot on iPhone’” [The Verge]. “Behind-the-scenes footage of Apple’s Monday evening Scary Fast event reveals how it was filmed using an iPhone 15 Pro Max… with the aid of a full suite of professional recording equipment and studio lighting. Still images and a video reveal that (unsurprisingly) a great deal of fancy equipment — from drones, gimbals, dollies, industrial set lighting, and other recording accessories — is still required to make iPhone footage look this good. Apple has utilized similar but far less extreme setups for previous events that were filmed using iPhones, including the Burberry spring / summer 2014 fashion show. It’s a neat way to promote the recording quality of iPhone cameras, but it’s not like everyday folks can recreate these kinds of results at home unless they happen to own a shedload of ludicrously expensive equipment. The gear shown in the ‘Scary Fast’ behind-the-scenes footage is fairly standard for big studio productions, but Apple’s implication with these so-called ‘shot on iPhone’ promotions is that anyone can do it if only they buy the newest iPhone.”
* * *
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 29 Fear (previous close: 30 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 35 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 31 at 12:25:30 PM ET.
The Gallery
“Ever-enduring Dürer” [The New Criterion]. “Whether he was in fact the first modern artist to also be notably narcissistic seems unlikely, but what Dürer created does indeed show astonishing genius—genius that he himself was unafraid to recognize…. the crowning and most personal works of the artist’s career are his three painted self-portraits. Ekserdjian traces Dürer’s career through these self-portraits, alongside such highlights as Adoration of the Holy Trinity (1511), the Protestant Four Apostles (1526), and a number of other magnificent altarpieces and portraits. But it is in the three surviving self-portraits that one finds the most skill. Ekserdjian writes that “Dürer painted at least four independent self-portraits, whereas most artists of the period did not execute even one.” These works, in addition to the many studies and commissions where Dürer inserted himself into the frame, reveal his novel interest in his own image. Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle (1493) shows a twenty-three-year-old Dürer gazing out at the viewer, as he does in all his self-portraits. His clothes are elegant, and yet an adolescent quality remains on his face. The Prado Self-Portrait (1498) depicts the artist as a twenty-six-year-old, this time in even finer attire, his golden hair done in tight ringlets, with any look of uncertainty now absent from his visage. Finally, the Self-Portrait at the Age of Twenty-Eight (1500) is the artist’s Meisterwerk. Here, his image is merged with the iconography of Christ. These paintings display both the ingenuity and mastery with which Dürer melded artist and subject into one, thereby realizing the ideal of the self-portrait.”
I like the later Hopper much better:
American Village, 1912 https://t.co/sx0DFEAdee pic.twitter.com/njppUrCC6K
— Edward Hopper (@artisthopper) October 31, 2023
Although Hopper was only 1912 – 1884 = 28 when he painted this.
Class Warfare
“UAW reaches deal with GM, ending strike against Detroit automakers” [Reuters]. “General Motors and the United Auto Workers (UAW) struck a tentative deal on Monday, ending the union’s unprecedented six-week campaign of coordinated strikes that won record pay increases for workers at the Detroit Three automakers. The accord follows deals the union reached in recent days with Ford Motor and Chrysler-owner Stellantis – significant victories for auto workers after years of stagnant wages and painful concessions following the 2008 financial crisis. ‘We wholeheartedly believe our strike squeezed every last dime out of General Motors,’ UAW President Shawn Fain said in a video address. ‘They underestimated us. They underestimated you.’” As far as two-tier: “The contract reverses years of efforts by GM to create lower-paid groups of UAW workers at units such as component plants, parts warehouses and electric vehicle battery operations…. The contract also restricts use of lower paid temporary workers. ‘We have slammed the door on having a permanent underclass of temporary workers at GM,’ Fain said.” • Presumably the contrac language will be forthcoming, so we can make sure that two-tier, per se, is gone, and Fain and the UAW leadership didn’t nibble round the edges.
“Return To Office is all about power” [Werd I/O]. Unlike… Unlike… Oh, wait…. “The essential flip is between an employer-controlled environment and a worker-controlled environment. In the former, employees can be observed and their behavior influenced. In the latter, not so much…. This balance of power, at least for knowledge workers, is what has flipped forever. Nobody’s willingly going back to an environment of predominant employer control — at least not without significant concessions. No matter which way you cut it or which tools you use, remote work does depend on trust in your employees, more devolved power and distributed equity, high transparency, and great, bi-directional communication. If those are challenging to an organization, there just might be deeper problems that need to be addressed.”
News of the Wired
“Tesla Model Y Owner Adds Buttons to Touchscreen, Gets Flamed by Tesla Fanboys” [The Drive]. “The installation was shown in a video from an unknown Chinese social media platform, which has since spread to Twitter. In it, a Model Y owner installs a plug-and-play button panel beneath the touchscreen, which controls functions such as climate control, door locks, and the trunk release. On top of letting the driver operate these (and other functions) without taking their eyes off the road, the row of buttons fits with the Tesla’s design and color scheme, looking like it could’ve been factory-installed. All in all, a win-win.” • Surprised there’s no after market for this.
“Can I remove my personal data from GenAI training datasets?” [Knowing Machines]. “How can you remove personal data from training datasets when you do not know if your data is even there? One way may be to ask nicely…. Another way is to sue…. But likely the most promising method to learn whether your personal data is in GenAI training datasets and to seek its deletion is to send a request under the CCPA, which is only available for California residents…. For now, there is no foolproof way to force companies to disclose whether, how much, and what kinds of your personal data have been used as training data for their GenAI products. Even if there was a way, however, it is currently technically impossible to fully remove data from training datasets without influencing deep learning models in unpredictable ways…. In a few months, we may see some technical progress on this issue; until then, companies may be unable to comply with data deletion provisions in laws like the CCPA.” • The companies can comply; it’s just that their AIs won’t work. So who’s problem is that? That’s what happens when you build your bullshit generation business on theft at scale.
* * *
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 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 Chet:
Chet writes: “Goldenrod is one of the most significant flowers, since it blooms in the autumn at a time when most other flowers are on the way out.”
* * *
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