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

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Chook Track of the Day

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

In Case You May Miss…

1. Warren v. Musk.
2. Democrat gerontocrats
3. Mangione charged with terrorism.
4. Chook flu, the primary extreme case.

Politics

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

Trump Transition

Warren asks for conflict-of-interest guidelines masking 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 apparent advert hom, after all. Tactically, nevertheless, it’s extremely unlucky that the Democrat standard-bearer on Elon’s oligarch-style conflicts is the form of DEI-beneficiary assured to get each conservative knee jerking:

Again in 1996, a spokesman for Harvard Regulation College rebutted claims that the varsity had no minority ladies on the college 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 critical, amongst different causes, as a result of it removes any doubt that Warren instantly claimed the id.”https://t.co/IHV47Q1LZY

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) December 18, 2024

We went over all this again in 2016, when the unimpeachably high-minded quondam Republican Warren was stabbing Sanders within the again — not that I’m bitter — however suffice to say that one is simply a Cherokee — the tribe to which Warren claimed to belong — if the tribe admits you, and Warren was by no means admitted. Warren provides each look of getting climbed to her eminence at Harvard Regulation College on their (non-white) backs, precisely what inflames, say, half the nation and distracts from the professional concern Warren raises. Too unhealthy the Democrats can’t do higher of their spokespersons, however right here we’re.

* * *

“The upcoming GOP assault on Social Safety” [Public Notice]. “Throughout all three of his presidential campaigns, Trump distanced himself from efforts to intestine Social Safety — form of. As with so many subjects, nevertheless, he has not been notably involved with consistency. In March of this 12 months, Trump let slip on CNBC that he simply may be satisfied to go after the social security web, stating, ‘There’s a lot you are able to do by way of entitlements by way of reducing.’ He then went on a slightly coherent “weave,” thereby managing to keep away from addressing the implications of his assertion…. Quickly after profitable the election, Trump tasked Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and their pseudo authorities company titled “DOGE” (after a crypto forex that had been began as a joke) with reducing as a lot as $2 trillion of annual spending from the federal price range. Ramaswamy initially appeared to disclaim that Social Safety can be touched, asserting that “program integrity” can be DOGE’s sole focus, and including that modifications in advantages can be a matter for Congress to determine. But, for 2 causes, there was far much less to that assurance than meets to eye. First, it has at all times been the case that Congress must vote in favor of any proposal to intestine entitlement applications. That’s as a result of Social Safety and Medicare comprise “necessary” spending, which is compelled by statute. And secondly, as a matter of monetary reality, the form of drastic austerity measures that Trump’s cronies are proposing will essentially contain large cuts to Social Safety, Medicare, or each. That’s as a result of roughly 60 % of the federal price range consists of necessary spending, whereas 10 % is dedicated to debt service. Of the remaining 30 %, half is protection spending, leaving solely 15 % that contains the whole lot of non-defense, discretionary spending.” • Left to their very own units, the Republicans, augmented by oligarchs, will do what they at all times do (if Trump permits it, however who is aware of). It’s to be hoped that the centrist dipshits who had been pushing a “Grand Cut price” within the Obama years don’t determine to hitch with DOGE and “save Social Safety.”

Democrats en déshabillé

“Pelosi Gained. The Democratic Occasion Misplaced” [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.”

“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

Right here is the indictment (PDF) “THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK in opposition to LUIGI MANGIONE“. From the primary paragraph:

This language is taken from New York State Penal Regulation § 490.25, “CRIME OF TERRORISM.” however I’m having a tough time understanding it. From my useful annotations:

[1] Is a medical insurance firm a “civilian inhabitants”? If not, who or what’s the civilian inhabitants intimidated or coerced? The category of all medical insurance CEOs? The category of all CEOs? The ruling class? (NOTE: I have no idea the that means of the phrase “inhabitants” in legislation, and suspect it’s completely different from the idea of “class” as a political economist can be it.)

[2], [3] Or is a medical insurance firm a “unit of presidency”? Absolutely not, until “unit” is a time period of artwork. But when not, what’s? Congress, in passing medical insurance reform? Extra ingeniously, the organs of state safety, who will now be “intimidated” into devising measures to cope with the menance?

“D.A. Bragg Declares Homicide Indictment Of Luigi Mangione” (Press Launch) [Manhattan District Attorney’s Office]. Right here is Bragg’s timeline:

In keeping with court docket paperwork and statements made on the file, MANGIONE arrived at Port Authority on a bus on November 24, 2024, and checked in on the HI New York Metropolis Hostel on the Higher West Facet. MANGIONE used a faux New Jersey ID underneath the identify Mark Rosario. MANGIONE prolonged his keep on the Hostel a number of instances.

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

Between 5:52 a.m. and 6:45 a.m., MANGIONE walked close to and across the Hilton Resort. At roughly 6:15 a.m. he bought a water bottle and granola bars on the Starbucks at 1290 sixth Avenue.

Between roughly 6:38 a.m. and 6:44 a.m., MANGIONE stood in opposition to a wall on the north facet of West 54th Avenue throughout from the Hilton, absolutely masked along with his hood up.

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

MANGIONE then fled northeast on 54th Avenue and took an e-bike uptown. He ultimately acquired right into a taxi and was dropped off at West 178th Avenue and Amsterdam Avenue after which fled the state.

Mr. Thompson was transported to Mt. Sinai Hospital the place he was pronounced useless at 7:12 a.m.

Two of the discharged shell casings had the phrases “DENY” and “DEPOSE” written on them, and the phrase “DELAY” was written on a bullet, all discovered on the scene.

On December ninth, MANGIONE was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after being noticed at an area McDonalds. When he was arrested, police recovered a 9-millimeter handgun with a 3D-printed receiver, two ammunition magazines, a number of reside cartridges, a home made silencer, and the faux New Jersey ID used on the hostel.

[1] From the video, Bragg has the order incorrect. First the leg, then the knee. This is able to be vital of Mangione’s protection is that he solely meant to kneecap Thompson, as Yves urges right here.

Lambert right here: America, being a gun-humpingloving nation, has a wealthy custom and physique of legislation centering on self-defense through firearms. With out lining up my hypothesis with the information of the case (for instance, it’s exhausting to see how capturing somebody within the again suits in to “stand your floor), what would self-defense in opposition to social homicide appear like, if it had been to be decreased to authorized doctrine? Let me suggest a thought experiment. Case A: Suppose (authorized) particular person HI (for medical insurance) has a machine gun, and (pure particular person) p has a handgun. If HI fires its machine gun at p, is p justified in firing again in self-defense? Absolutely so. (I assume the analogy between denying care and firing a machine gun is obvious.) Case B: Allow us to suppose we interpose a sheet of paper between HI and p. HI once more fires their machine gun at p however by the paper. Is p justified in firing again? Absolutely so. Case C: Suppose that we go away the paper in place, and introduce a fancy Rube Goldberg system between HI’s set off finger, and the set off of the machine gun. HI’s finger twitches, the Rube Goldberg system pulls the set off, the machine gun fires, and once more the bullets undergo the paper. Once more, is p justified in firing again? This case appears not so clear, however why precisely? (I assume the analogy between the medical insurance business’s claims denial course of and a Rube Goldberg system is obvious.) What’s it concerning the degree of indirection in Case C that separates it from Instances A and B? Feedback from attorneys welcome!

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

Covid Assets, United States (Nationwide): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; contains many counties; Wastewater Scan, contains drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, however nationwide information). “An infection Management, Emergency Administration, Security, and Basic 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 deal with given with the vegetation. 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 reviews); 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, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Keep secure on the market!

Transmission: H5N1

<“Well being officers say Louisiana affected person is first extreme chook flu case in US” [Associated Press]. “An individual in Louisiana has the primary extreme sickness attributable to chook flu within the U.S., well being officers mentioned Wednesday. The affected person had been involved with sick and useless birds in yard flocks, the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention mentioned. Company officers didn’t instantly element the particular person’s signs…. The CDC confirmed the Louisiana an infection on Friday, however didn’t announce it till Wednesday. It’s additionally the primary U.S. human case linked to publicity to a yard flock, the company mentioned…. Did the Louisiana affected person have pre-existing situations that made her or him extra inclined to sickness? Is the particular person on a ventilator? The CDC deferred these and different questions concerning the affected person to state well being officers, who didn’t instantly reply.” • Due to course.

“CDC Confirms First Extreme Case of H5N1 Chook Flu in the US” (press launch) [CDC]. “This case underscores that, along with affected industrial poultry and dairy operations, wild birds and yard flocks additionally is usually a supply of publicity….. Which means that yard flock house owners, hunters and different chook fans must also take precautions. The easiest way to forestall H5 chook flu is to keep away from publicity each time doable. Contaminated birds shed avian influenza A viruses of their saliva, mucous, and feces. Different contaminated animals could shed avian influenza A viruses in respiratory secretions and different bodily fluids (e.g., in unpasteurized cow milk or ‘uncooked milk’).” • Keep away from contact, use PPE, don’t contact contaminated surfaces or supplies. NOTE I’m not recalling a case of chook flu transmitted by uncooked milk, repellent and harmful although I discover the uncooked milk grift.

Testing and Monitoring: Wastewater

Some modelers are calling a winter Covid “surge” proper now. Some remarks. First, I don’t use graphs like these under as a result of I don’t regard them as actionable; I take advantage of the CDC maps as a result of they’re higher in a position to reply questions like “Ought to I am going to see Grandma in Wichita this Christmas?” or “Ought to I take that ski trip in Colorado in January?” Additional, my Covid protocols are fixed; I wouldn’t differ them by the fluctuations within the graph in any case. Additional, I object to calling a surge earlier than it’s seen:

You’ll discover that the “surge” on this chart is all projection. Nicely, I’ve demonstrated prior to now that CDC projections aren’t essentially dependable; and I don’t view different fashions as any higher; see Closed Type. So I’d advocate reserving the time period “surge” for an really oberved occasion of some scale, and never a projection up to now scaled to a ripple primarily based on previous occasions, as proven on this brutally and shamefully truncated CDC chart:

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

TABLE 1: Day by day Covid Charts

Lambert right here: Walgreen’s positivity hasn’t gone up, nevertheless it hasn’t gone down, both.

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[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?