By Lambert Strether.
Hen Tune of the Day
Brown Thrasher, Indian Springs WMA, two-track highway, Washington, Maryland, United States. “Grownup male Brown Thrasher singing from decrease branches of a Sycamore tree close to the highway.”
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In Case You May Miss…
Court docket submitting: Who’s in cost at DOGE? If not Musk, who?
Ed Zitron: “The Generative AI Con.”
The worth of note-taking.
Politics
“So lots of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in truth a rational administration of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
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DOGE
“Declaration of Joshua Fisher” (PDF) [State of New Mexico, et al., v. Elon Musk, in his official capacity, et al., United States District Court for the District of Columbia]. Fisher is director of the White Home Workplace of Administration. Wonderful stuff:
Just a few days in the past, we confirmed how Trump’s Government Orders establishes DOGE groups as a Bolshevik-style parallel construction to current goverment companies. And now we be taught that DOGE has no one in cost? No “service administrator”? Bolsheviks, however no Lenin? Or does Fisher know who the extraordinarily clear DOGE’s boss is, however he’s simply not telling us? Definitely President Trump believes Musk is in cost:
Nicely, that is awkward.
— Scott Greenfield (@ScottGreenfield) February 18, 2025
So who’s accountable for DOGE? Massive Balls?
“Who’s accountable for DOGE? Not Elon Musk, White Home says” [Politico]. “The technical designation doesn’t imply Musk shouldn’t be, for all sensible functions, the important thing decision-maker for DOGE, which has been staffed stuffed with his allies and should still finally be fueled by his affect within the White Home. Musk has eagerly touted DOGE’s work, described his affect over its operations and appeared alongside Trump to speak about its mission. Trump himself has credited Musk with main DOGE. ‘I’m going to inform [Elon Musk] very quickly, like possibly in 24 hours, to go test the Division of Training,’ Trump mentioned in a Tremendous Bowl interview with Fox Information anchor Bret Baier. ‘He’s going to seek out the identical factor … Then I’m going to go, go to the army. Let’s test the army.’ However the Fisher submitting suggests a technical diploma of separation that raises new questions on accountability for DOGE’s operations — a breakneck effort that has alarmed federal staff and raised fears about knowledge breaches in among the federal authorities’s most carefully guarded databases.” • Recall as soon as extra (cited right here) Madison’s elementary architectural precept for devising checks and balances: “The curiosity of the person have to be related with the constitutional rights of the place.” And I wrote: “[T]he President’s actions in creating DOGE and setting it in movement run counter to Madison’s precept; ‘locations’ [offices] are unclear, therefore pursuits are unclear, therefore checks are unclear, therefore ‘inside construction of the federal government’ is out of whack.” Right here we’ve a spot (“Companies Administrator”) with no “man” in it. And but that Service is putatively auditing the Federal Authorities! It’s extraordinary.
“DOGE’s ‘Nerd Military’ Is Breaking the Authorities by Threatening to Snitch to Elon” [Rolling Stone]. “When safety officers, as an illustration, at a number of departments and companies have responded that they should test to make sure these younger Musk allies have correct clearance to view delicate databases, DOGE workers have routinely erupted in fury. Some have advised these safety officers that in the event that they don’t give them what they need instantly, they’ll name Musk’s cellphone and provides him the officers’ names — and have the richest man on the planet name and yell at them, or get them reprimanded or fired. ‘Do I must name Elon?‘ one DOGE member barked at a federal safety official whereas demanding entry to delicate data at one company this month, a supply aware of the change tells Rolling Stone. This has occurred repeatedly because the daybreak of the second Trump administration — on the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement (USAID), the Treasury Division, on the Workplace of Personnel Administration, and elsewhere. It has grow to be a merciless punchline throughout the federal paperwork, 4 sources aware of the matter inform Rolling Stone, that ‘some youngster’ from the DOGE staff ‘will threaten to name Elon Musk, in case you don’t do what the kid desires,’ as one federal profession official describes it. Up to now, it’s working.” • DOGEbags certainly. And so they appear to know who their boss is. Why doesn’t the White Home?
“The Elon DOGE Emperor Has No Garments” [TechDirt]. Wonderful article. This caught my eye: “If the Justice Division’s declaration is true and Elon actually isn’t working DOGE, then federal staff ought to instantly cease bowing down to those threats. In spite of everything, why would anybody want to fret a couple of name from somebody who (in keeping with the DOJ) has no official function or authority over the DOGE staff? In actual fact, given this declaration, shouldn’t safety officers be asking DOGE workers who truly has the authority to override their safety protocols? (Good luck getting a solution to that one.)?” • It could be enjoyable if some intelligent lawyer turned this right into a lawsuit.
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* * *“Elon Musk’s wrecking ball” [Ed Luce, Financial Times]. Ed Luce is Ed Luce, so there’s nothing readers don’t already know, however this sentence caught my eye: “Take nothing at face worth.” • Within the pages of the FT! All people within the DOGE flexnet — the bent squillionaires, the “outdated heads”, the feral/incel engineers — lie like they breathe. No, that’s not honest. It takes no audacity to breathe. For instance–
“No, 150-12 months-Olds Aren’t Amassing Social Safety Advantages” [Wired]. “Musk first made the claims throughout his Oval Workplace press convention final week, when he claimed {that a} ‘cursory examination of Social Safety, and we acquired folks in there which are 150 years outdated.’” Cursory is correct. Extra: “Whereas no proof was produced to again up this declare, it was picked up by the right-wing commentators on-line, totally on Musk’s personal X platform, in addition to being reported credibly by pro-Trump media retailers. Pc programmers shortly claimed that the 150 determine was not proof of fraud, however reasonably the results of a bizarre quirk of the Social Safety Administration’s advantages system, which was largely written in COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that undergirds SSA’s databases in addition to methods from many different US authorities companies. COBOL isn’t used at the moment, and as such, Musk’s cadre of younger engineers might be unfamiliar with it. As a result of COBOL doesn’t have a date kind, some implementations rely as a substitute on a system whereby all dates are coded to a reference level. Essentially the most generally used is Could 20, 1875, as this was the date of a world standards-setting convention held in Paris, referred to as the ‘Conference du Mètre.’ These methods default to the reference level when a start date is lacking or incomplete, that means all of these entries in 2025 would present an age of 150. That’s only one doable clarification for what DOGE allegedly discovered. Musk may even have merely seemed up the SSA’s personal web site, which explains that since September 2015 the company has robotically stopped profit funds when anybody reaches the age of 115. Nevertheless, on Monday morning Musk doubled down, posting a screenshot of what he claims had been figures from ‘the Social Safety database’ to X, writing that ‘the numbers of individuals in every age bucket with the dying area set to FALSE!’ The figures advised that over 10 hundreds of thousands folks aged over 120 had been gathering advantages…. The truth that the Social Safety system accommodates hundreds of thousands of entries from people who find themselves lifeless is probably going distinct from a possible COBOL-caused error, and likewise not information. A report written by the SSA’s inspector basic in 2023 discovered that 98 p.c of these aged 100 or older within the Social Safety databases usually are not in receipt of any advantages. The report added that the database wouldn’t be up to date as a result of it could price an excessive amount of cash to take action.” • Coping with Elon is like coping with Ukrainian propaganda. It’s actually good propaganda, it is available in nice quantity, and its amplified by a military of bots and shills. Additionally, any trace of DOGEbags messing with Social Safety offers me the creeps. Because it do you have to, irrespective of your age. NOTE: My recollection is that Elon’s first collection of lies was primarily based solely on Social Safety information aged 150, for which Wired — solely an precise Social Safety maintainer may give definitive proof — offers an account. Elon then launched into a second collection of lies with extra information, displaying different out-of-band values. The next offers an account for each campaigns (Occam’s razor slicing towards the datatype aspect reasonably than the fraud aspect, it appears to me).
“1875 Social Safety rumor” [Keith Thompson, GIthub]. “Musk didn’t instantly say that funds had been being made to people who find themselves 150 12 months outdated, however that’s virtually definitely what we had been alleged to infer. In response to this, it was claimed to be a results of a function of the COBOL programming language, that supposedly specifies 1875-05-20 as a base date, used to mark an unknown date. This isn’t the case; the COBOL normal doesn’t consult with 1875. However this false clarification unfold shortly by means of each social media and information retailers, being reported by Rachel Maddow amongst others. One other alleged clarification is that that date is specified by ISO 8601, the usual that gave us the YYYY-MM-DD date format.” And so far as funds go:
“There was an audit in 2023 by the SSA Inspector Common about quantity holders over the age of 100 with no report of dying on file. They recognized simply shy of 19 million. They had been capable of finding dying certificates and information for a pair million, however most couldn’t be verified. However right here’s the essential half that Musk is omitting: Of the 19 million over the age of 100 with out a verified dying report, solely 44,000 quantity holder accounts had been truly drawing social safety funds. Meaning solely 44k folks aged 100+ nonetheless gathering SS, which is a extra logical scenario.”
“Statistically, it’s cheap there are 44K folks older than 100. It represents .013% p.c of the inhabitants which is according to the 100+ populations within the UK, France and Germany.”
And:
The essential significance of area data can by no means be overstated in relation to knowledge scientific analysis. You’ll by no means get good (and truthful) outcomes in case you don’t have a deep understanding of the intricacies of the particular knowledge units beneath investigation. And, these of us who’ve accomplished this for some time know that just about each knowledge set (particularly people who stay in databases whose ages are measured in a long time) are likely to have boatloads of “attention-grabbing” facets that make easy evaluation difficult at finest.
(I discovered the Github gist by beginning at this Stack Change thread. I’m nonetheless ready for an actual knowledge analyst smarter than me to elucidate it to me like I’m give, however the backside line is that Musk screaming fraud is a lie, and his motive for doing so needs to be questions).
Stack Change
Syndemics
“I’m in earnest — I can’t equivocate — I can’t excuse — I can’t retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
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Covid Assets, United States (Nationwide): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; consists of many counties; Wastewater Scan, consists of drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, however nationwide knowledge). “An infection Management, Emergency Administration, Security, and Common Ideas” (particularly on hospitalization by metropolis).
Lambert right here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To replace any entry, do be at liberty to contact me on the tackle given with the crops. Please put “COVID” within the topic line. Thanks!
Assets, United States (Native): 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 stories); 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).
Assets, Canada (Nationwide): Wastewater (Authorities of Canada).
Assets, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tricks to useful 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, sq. coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Keep protected on the market!
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TABLE 1: Every day Covid Charts
Wastewater
This week[1] CDC February 10
Final week[2] CDC (till subsequent week):
Variants [3] CDC February 15
Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC February 8
Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, knowledge February 14:
Nationwide [6] CDC February 13:
Positivity
Nationwide[7] Walgreens February 17:
★ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic February 8:
Vacationers Knowledge
★ Positivity[9] CDC January 27:
★ Variants[10] CDC January 27
Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 25:
Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 25:
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new at the moment; all others usually are not up to date.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution picture, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Home windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open picture in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) Down, nothing new at main hubs.
[2] (CDC) Final week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has accomplished an incredible job normalizing successive waves of an infection.
[4] (ED) Somewhat uptick.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Undoubtedly jumped, however no exponential progress both, Odd.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward pattern since, properly, Thanksgiving.
[9] (Vacationers: Positivity) Leveling out.
[10] (Vacationers: Variants). Positivity is new, however variants haven’t but been launched.
[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.
[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.
Stats Watch
Manufacturing: “United States NY Empire State Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The NY Empire State Manufacturing Index surged 18.3 factors to +5.7 in February 2025, simply surpassing market expectations of -1 and signaling a slight rebound in enterprise exercise throughout New York State. New orders and shipments noticed average progress, whereas employment ranges declined.”
Housing: “United States NAHB Housing Market Index” [Trading Economics]. “The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index within the US fell to 42 in February 2025, the bottom in 5 months, in comparison with 47 in January, and under forecasts of 47, dragged down by considerations on tariffs, elevated mortgage charges and excessive housing prices. The gauge measuring present gross sales situations fell 4 factors to 46, the part measuring gross sales expectations within the subsequent six months plunged 13 factors to 46, and the gauge charting site visitors of potential consumers posted a three-point decline to 29.”
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Manufacturing: “Decide offers Boeing and DOJ one other month to barter 737 Max fraud plea” [FlightGlobal]. “Boeing and the US Division of Justice (DOJ) have acquired an additional month to barter a doable revised responsible plea by the corporate to federal fraud costs associated to certification the 737 Max. US federal decide Reed O’Connor has delayed to 14 March a deadline by which Boeing and the DOJ should replace the court docket about their efforts to succeed in a deal that will head off a trial, in keeping with a 17 February court docket order. The corporate and DOJ had beforehand been required to submit an replace by 16 February. However each requested an extension, citing the current administration change in Washington.”
Manufacturing: “Boeing’s Air Pressure One program could possibly be delayed till 2029, or later, White Home official says” [Reuters]. “The Air Pressure One program could also be additional delayed till 2029 or years later, a senior administration official mentioned, citing provide chain points and altering necessities, after the White Home mentioned the mission didn’t ship a brand new airplane on time over the weekend. The delays are irritating, however not a lot will be accomplished to hurry supply, the official advised Reuters, noting that Boeing confronted issues getting elements since some producers had gone out of enterprise. Some necessities for the plane had additionally modified, given evolving potential threats, the official mentioned.”
Tech: “The Generative AI Con” [Ed Zitron, Where’s Your Ed At?]. “This isn’t the early days of shit. The Consideration Is All You Want paper that began the entire transformer-based structure motion was printed in June 2017. We’re over two years in, hyperscalers have sunk over 200 billion {dollars} in capital expenditures into generative AI, AI startups took up a 3rd of all enterprise capital funding in 2024, and virtually each single proficient synthetic intelligence skilled is laser-focused on Giant Language Fashions. And even then, we nonetheless don’t have a killer app! There isn’t any product that everyone loves, and there’s no iPhone second!” • Nicely, Ed? How concerning the authorities? (Word I’m not suggesting that no matter DOGE’s little schemers bear in mind shall be higher than our present expertise; worse, if something, since you’ll by no means ever attain a human.)
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Immediately’s Concern & Greed Index: 44 Concern (earlier shut: 46 Impartial) [CNN]. One week in the past: 38 (Concern). (0 is Excessive Concern; 100 is Excessive Greed). Final up to date Feb 14 at 6:59:56 PM ET.
Rapture Index: Closes down one on Meals Provide. “The shortage of exercise has downgraded this class” [Rapture Ready]. File Excessive, October 10, 2016: 189. Present: 180. (Keep in mind that bringing on the Rapture is sweet.) • This can be a robust crowd. Absolutely Trump’s first month introduced the Rapture nearer?
Gallery
Plus ça change…
Within the city of Novgorod, they generally come throughout preserved birch bark. Folks used this bark to jot down on, together with Onfim! Archaeologists have discovered 17 items of bark marked together with his homework. However what do these inscriptions reveal? A younger boy who disliked college! 2/ pic.twitter.com/04FPOVkFvH
— Dr Hugh Thomas (@hughs_news) February 16, 2025
Musical Interlude
Response is the place we’re at, for positive:
Which works two methods:
The Office
“The Excellent Candidate Will Be Punched Within the Abdomen” [Scott Smitelli]. • The office…
Especiallly for any DOGE-adjacent readers (full thread):
And:
Information of the Wired
“Why can’t we bear in mind our lives as infants or toddlers?” [Guardian]. “Mockingly, for parenting influencers who put up about elaborate holidays within the title of making ‘core reminiscences’, the early occasions that youngsters retain will be surprisingly mundane – ‘issues that the majority mother and father would by no means reminisce elaboratively about’, [Prof Elaine Reese at the University of Otago] says. ‘The traditional instance from my very own analysis is a toddler who remembers seeing a worm on the footpath one time.’” • Hmm.
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Contact data for crops: Readers, be at liberty to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) learn how to ship me a test in case you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to learn how to ship me pictures of crops. Greens are tremendous! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary crops! If you would like your deal with to seem as a credit score, please place it at the beginning of your mail in parentheses: (thus). In any other case, I’ll anonymize by utilizing your initials. See the earlier Water Cooler (with plant) right here. From AM:
AM writes: “December 29, 2024 in Roger Williams Park. 50 diploma air + ice on pond = fog. Not probably the most engaging tree, however atmospheric nonetheless.”
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