Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Over the last week some more Senate campaign polls have been released, which I’ve been gathering up for one big post.

NBC News/Marist, via The Detroit News, has found that in Arizona, Kelly (D) leads appointed incumbent McSally (R) 53% to 41%. That 12 point lead is well outside the margin of error of 4.1 points. Public Policy Polling has similar results of 51% to 42%, CNN gives Kelly a 50-43 point lead, and Morning Consult gives Kelly a huge lead of 16 points, 52 percent to 36 percent. That last one sounds like an outlier.

NBC News is reporting another NBC News/Marist poll finds Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham leads GOP Sen. Thom Tillis by 9 points, with the backing of 50 percent of voters, compared to Tillis’ 41 percent. Public Policy Polling has Cunningham up by 8 points, 48% to 40%. Morning Consult has a similar lead for Cunningham, 46-37%. It’d be more comforting to see Cunningham solidly break the 50% barrier.

In Maine, Public Policy Polling has the least loyal GOP Senator, Susan Collins, still behind State Rep and Speaker of the House Sara Gideon (D), 42%-47%; a Colby College poll gives Gideon a 44-39% lead. In past elections, Collins has won her seat by comfortable 20-30 point margins, so this is an unfamiliar position for Collins. Her current TrumpScore of 67.5%, the lowest of all GOP Senators, doesn’t cover up the fact that she voted against conviction in the impeachment trial of the President, asserting “I believe that the president has learned from this case.” Her lack of judgment and her vote to confirm Justice Kavanaugh appears to be coming back to haunt her.

OnTheIssues: John James.

Michigan’s Senator Gary Peters (D) retains a 10 point lead over challenger John James (R), according to a Fox News Poll, while Morning Consult suggests a larger lead, 49 percent to 35 percent., and CNN gives Peters a big 54-38% lead. Recent reports indicate the Trump campaign, down 49-41 in the Fox News poll, has withdrawn from the state. Will this help or hurt James, a businessman and former Army Ranger Army veteran who is Ranger-qualified (this is not the same as being an Army ranger – my mistake)? It’s not clear to me that James is a Trump devotee; his front campaign page does not mention the President, and OnTheIssue’s analysis of the scant data available on James (he’s never held elective office) suggests he’s not a hard right conservative. So far, it does not appear the independents of Michigan have found him appealing. It may be that James has chosen a poor time to be a Republican candidate. Running for a top legislative position without prior experience may also be working against him, as the Amateur ethic finally appears to be flaming out.

There is no question of amateurs in Colorado, where former Gov Hickenlooper (D) is leading incumbent Senator Gardner (R) 48-42%, according to Morning Consult. At the beginning of the campaign season – the day after the November 2018 election, I think – Gardner was considered to be one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents, so his showing against a popular former Governor is actually fairly credible. His TrumpScore is 89.1%, but it’s worth noting that’s over two Congresses; in the current Congress, it’s a much lower 82.9%. He may not be competitive with Senator Collins of Maine in disloyalty to the President, and he did not vote for conviction in the Trump Impeachment proceedings, but claims of independence from Trump cannot quite be dismissed out of hand. Trump is not mentioned on the front page of Gardner’s Senate Campaign page, either. Gardner is one of the most likely incumbents to score a come-from-behind win, even in relatively liberal Colorado, but he has some climbing to do, and has to hope Hickenlooper stumbles.

In Georgia, incumbent Senator Perdue (R) has a lead over challenger Jon Ossoff (D), an investigative journalist with no elective offices to his credit, but it’s not a big lead, according to Morning Consult: 45 percent to 42 percent, which is just within the margin of error. Ossoff does have a history of big fund-raising, which may make for a hair-raising campaign over the next 90-odd days. Perdue’s colleague, appointed incumbent Senator Loeffler (R), faces a special election in the form of a jungle primary, and the only news I’ve seen is that Loeffler’s taking a lot of flak from fellow Republican Rep Doug Collins, a Trump favorite. While Loeffler is unlikely to win reelection, a Collins replacement would be no better.

In South Carolina, ALG Research, for LindseyMustGo.com, finds incumbent Senator Graham (R) ahead of challenger Jaime Harrison, 49-45%. I’m taking this opportunity to extend my condolences to Senator Graham in his loss in the Trump Lickspittle contest, as I believe former Senator and AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, through his pledges of allegiance to the disdainful President Trump, must be declared the victor.

Right here in Minnesota, despite the frantic warning emails from incumbent Senator Tina Smith (D) that challenger and former Rep Jason Lewis (R) is within striking distance, Public Policy Polling gives Senator Smith a comfortable 48%-39% lead. This is in line with the special election Smith won in 2018 as the appointed incumbent, beating hockey name Karin Housley by 11 points, and there’s little reason to believe that Lewis will close the distance before election day.

New Hampshire’s incumbent Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D) doesn’t yet have a definitive Republican opponent, but a recent University of New Hampshire poll suggests it may not matter – she holds double-digit leads and more than 50% support over both of her most likely opponents. In my original coverage of this seat, I suggested this might be a race to watch, but it appears Shaheen has matters well in hand.

Finally, the Senate is seen as a critical piece of political landscape by both parties, and Senator McConnell (R), Majority Leader, doesn’t much care for President Trump’s feelings, according to this CNN report:

Sen. Mitch McConnell is allowing Republican Senate candidates to do whatever it takes to salvage their campaigns ahead of what Republicans increasingly fear could be a devastating election for their party.

In recent weeks, the Senate majority leader has become so concerned over Republicans losing control of the Senate that he has signaled to vulnerable GOP senators in tough races that they could distance themselves from the President if they feel it is necessary, according to multiple senior Republicans including a source close to McConnell.

As the CNN report notes, this will be a tightrope for GOP candidates, whether incumbents or challengers. So long as President Trump retains his popularity, he will be a potent intra-party force, so for those Senators who are perceived to have abandoned him – and that’s an exceedingly short rope – they may find themselves under attack prior to and after the election, win or lose. See former Senator Sessions (R-AL) for a graphic lesson in consequences for a former Trump favorite, who discovered that loyalty to nation coming before loyalty to Trump is not tolerated by Trump – or his base, as Sessions lost the primary to regain his old Senate seat to political novice Tommy Tuberville, and lost badly.

Trump’s base is not composed of politically savvy people, so their basis of assessment is not an informed knowledge of the issues, but simply the view put forward by Trump. When a Republican Senator disagrees, he’s considered a traitor to the Cause. Alternative views need not apply in the Party of RINO-ism. Intolerance is an increasingly strong rule within the Republican Party, and many are discovering that intolerance is an unpleasant way to live when you’re on the wrong end of the spear.

And Trump’s decisions down this stretch run will help decide Senate races. I’m not talking campaign, but simply governance decisions. He’s not built a good base in this area, as his abdication of responsibility has served him ill, as has his denial that the coronavirus was a threat for a very long time. He could come back, though, if he began acting responsibly. Has he started that after that “change in tone” day when he admitted things will get worse before they get better?

Conservative theological pundit Erick Erickson’s mail to non-subscribers suggests bewilderment at the President’s actions:

If the President would pour himself into fighting the virus and give people confidence that he is focused on it, that would buy him time to focus on the economy after calming people down. Polling consistently shows the public prefers President Trump to handle the economy. That same polling shows consistently the public is way more worried about the virus and wants to see that the President is fighting it. Right now, all they seem to see are mixed messages and trolling.

All of this is enough to make one wonder if the President even really wants to win. If he does, why is he online trolling his opponents with claims of delaying the election instead of bunkering down and acting like the man in the arena in charge and command of a national fight against a deadly virus?

There are less than 100 days and a lot at stake. The winners will shape the state legislative and congressional lines for a decade. This is bigger than the presidency. Does the President care?

So long as Erickson does not accept that this President is mentally ill, and the conservative movement is pathologically stricken with religious nonsense and hubristic certainty, he’ll find the President’s actions frustrating and confusing.

I think the President wants to win, but he doesn’t understand how. His perception of the world is that it doesn’t change. After all, he got away with lying and cheating for decades as a real estate developer, and acting is much the same. It worked the first time as a candidate, why not the second?

But the electorate has watched and learned, per polling results. We’ll see just what they’ve learned come election day – or perhaps a couple of weeks later, when all the counting is done. I hope we’re done with this spasm of amateurs, whether they’re CEOs or religious nutcases, as well as arrogant, frantic ideologues, whose false idols (sorry, sorry, that was a stretch) have betrayed them in times of crisis and even times of calm – think the 2017 tax reform bill which did nothing for us, despite GOP predictions.

And Trump doesn’t get it – he doesn’t get that the environment has changed. Hell, the GOP didn’t even create a new platform for this President election cycle, they just crossed out 2016 and wrote in 2020, at Trump’s direction. Change? Change is evil, not to mention uncomfortable.

Deny it.

If you think 2020 can’t get any worse, Dr. Tony Phillips notes a recent study that indicates that a Solar Minimum, which the Sun is enmeshed in currently, doesn’t mean the Sun can’t experience a monstrous case of the hiccups:

“In late October 1903, one of the strongest solar storms in modern history hit Earth,” say the lead authors of the study, Hisashi Hayakawa (Osaka University, Japan) and Paulo Ribeiro (Coimbra University, Portugal). “The timing of the storm interestingly parallels where we are now–near Solar Minimum just after a weak solar cycle.”

The 1903 event wasn’t always recognized as a great storm. Hayakawa and colleagues took an interest in it because of what happened when the storm hit. In magnetic observatories around the world, pens scrabbling across paper chart recorders literally flew offscale, overwhelmed by the disturbance. That’s the kind of thing superstorms do.
So, the researchers began to scour historical records for clues, and they found four magnetic observatories in Portugal, India, Mexico and China where the readings were whole. Using those data they calculated the size of the storm.

“It was big,” says Hayakawa. “The 1903 storm ranks 6th in the list of known geomagnetic storms since 1850, just below the extreme storm of March 1989, which blacked out the province of Quebec.”

Today’s solar face, from which sunspots are virtually absent. A red herring, I presume.

Communications were scrambled – in 1903, meaning telegraph operators were unable to easily communicate with each other. Telephones became unworkable: In Chicago, voltages in telephone lines spiked to 675 volts–“enough to kill a man” according to headlines in the Chicago Sunday Tribune. That was annoying and maybe disturbing back then. Today? We might experience country-wide electrical grid failures, satellites providing critical services might be irremediably damaged, during the worst of it, the Internet might disappear – and provide a reason to dismiss Elon Musk’s irritating, to astronomers, scheme to use satellites for the Internet.

Perhaps Phillips is a bit of a drama queen, but the changes of this sort of thing happening are non-zero. Just as were Trump’s chances of becoming President – barely non-zero.

But could it become reality?

I was thinking that the Democrats, especially if asked by the Senate Republicans, could produce articles of impeachment very quickly, get them passed, and on to the Senate in a matter of a few days – no matter how much House Republicans object.

But, of course, why would the Senate Republicans ask?

And then this came along.

The co-founder of the Federalist Society, who voted for Trump and opposed both the Mueller probe and Ukraine impeachment, says the president’s tweet about delaying the election is grounds for impeachment: https://t.co/FOmO1X57lC

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 30, 2020

The Federalist Society is very conservative. If the co-founder is willing to say that Trump’s yapping is grounds for impeachment, is it possible that Senator “Moscow” McConnell (R-KY), in hopes of saving his Senate majority and himself, might be willing to throw the President under the bus, dance on his grave, and appeal for the Republican base and the independents to vote for them after redemption?

It’d be vastly entertaining. The Democrats would have to be sure to get McConnell on the record, guaranteeing the necessary votes to attain conviction, otherwise the Democrats would look bad.

Just … something to keep in mind. I suspect Trump would be honored to be impeached twice, even if he was convicted – he’d make the record books, be relieved of taking a chance on losing the reelection, and just claim the establishment had it in for him all along.

Relativity Space has an attractive approach to space travel:

Relativity’s goal is to disrupt the entire process of manufacturing rockets. “For the last 60 years, the way rockets have been built hasn’t really changed,” says Ellis. Instead of relying on the traditional, complicated assembly line of machines and people sculpting and piecing together parts of a vehicle, Relativity wants to make building a rocket almost entirely automated. The trick? Using giant 3D printers that can create all of the parts needed to build a rocket — from the engines to the propellant tanks and structure.

At the company’s Los Angeles headquarters, Relativity has the largest metal 3D printer by volume, a machine that’s capable of creating parts that are up to 20 feet tall and 10 feet wide. It’s called Stargate, another nod to Starcraft, and the team designed this printer from scratch, which means they can scale it up if needed. Ellis says that by relying on printers like this for manufacturing, the team will be able to produce about 95 percent of the rocket through 3D-printed automation. The last 5 percent still requires human labor. Most of that human interaction will be centered on testing, shipping, and very small amounts of manual assembly. [The Verge]

The article speaks of the speed and reduction in price of assembly, but, if the printers are up to snuff, this should also reduce mistakes that can take down a rocket, a device operating in a very demanding environment. They’ve already secured a launch pad at Cape Canaveral; once they can successfully launch, they want to go beyond SpaceX – they want to go to Mars, and then find a way to takeoff from there.

It’s just like a pulp SF novel from the 1950s. And very cool.

(h/t CT)

Neologism:

1. A new word, expression, or usage.
2. The creation or use of new words or senses.
3. Psychology
   1. The invention of new words regarded as a symptom of certain psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia.
   2. A word so invented.
4. Theology A new doctrine or a new interpretation of scripture. [The Free Dictionary]

Noted in “The Roots Of Wokeness,” Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish:

Language changes, and we shouldn’t worry about that. Maybe some of these terms will stick around. But the linguistic changes have occurred so rapidly, and touched so many topics, that it has all the appearance of a top-down re-ordering of language, rather than a slow, organic evolution from below. While the New York Times once had a reputation for being a bit stodgy on linguistic matters, pedantic, precise and slow-to-change, as any paper of record might be, in the last few years, its pages have been flushed with so many neologisms that a reader from, say, a decade ago would have a hard time understanding large swathes of it. And for many of us regular readers, we’ve just gotten used to brand new words popping up suddenly to re-describe something we thought we knew already. We notice a new word, make a brief mental check, and move on with our lives.

An interesting explication of the problematic roots of ‘wokeness.’

Rhubarb the Cat, as Cleopatra: Certified Scene Stealer And Ravager. And Peter Lorre knows it.

The Comedy Of Terrors (1963) is a clumsily constructed comedy concerning a funeral parlor operator and his oppressed henchman, frustrated opera-singer wife, demented father-in-law, and his troubled relationships with his landlord and his bottle. Full of tired tropes, it displays flashes of ingenuity, but in the end, I’d rather have that hour and a half back.

Only watch this if you’re a Price, Karloff, Lorre, or Rathbone completist. Incidentally, this is a rare ‘neutral’ role for Rathbone, who usually played antagonists, with the obvious exception of his Holmes portrayals.

But, really, that shouldn’t lure you in. This is a Venus flytrap of a movie.

This is of concern, via Steve Benen:

The debate that’s coming into focus is centered around an unsettling question: are “reform” efforts at USPS [by Louis DeJoy, new head of the USPS] part of a deliberate political campaign?

These questions are getting louder. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on Twitter yesterday, “Mail delays could mean delays for mail-in ballots, essential supplies, and life-saving medications. Louis DeJoy is the Betsy DeVos of the Postal Service, and he’s sabotaging his own agency when its work has never been more important.”

I think the Biden campaign should put out an announcement that, in the event of a Biden victory, all Trump political appointees concerning whom credible complaints are made will be thoroughly investigated, and those found to have engaged in malfeasance will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Sometimes reminders are helpful. If nothing else, some appointees will consult with their lawyers, and, realizing their contemplated actions might leave them open to a legal attack, desist their maleficent ways.

At least it would generate some conversation.

From a week or two ago, the stargazer lilies finally emerged:

President Trump’s favorite campaign miracle:

The president has repeatedly touted a “silent majority” of Americans he expects to show up en mass on Election Day to shock pollsters and help him repeat his surprising 2016 victory. His campaign has developed lengthy slide shows aimed at disproving public polls and predicting a swell of unexpected support that will propel Trump past Democratic rival Joe Biden in November. [WaPo]

Here’s where the real deciders lie:

That roughly 40% that didn’t vote in 2016, those are the potential deciders. If they come out in significant numbers, and are as appalled by Trump’s America as are those who are being polled, the right wing “hidden voters” won’t matter.

Geographic maps are interesting if your interest is geography. If it’s something else?

Population density map of the US also shows the Great Plains really well too. Source: https://t.co/L1gG7y5stv pic.twitter.com/59WVNo470y

— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) July 27, 2020

Kuestenmacher appears to be a demographer and map aggregator. This lovely – and hysterical – map illustrates not only how our population is spread out, but could be enhanced to demonstrate how some Senators represent many people, and some Senators only a few – yet each has an equal vote in the Senate.

In an update on candidate Trump’s promise to renew the coal mining and coal-fired power industries, the latest information from President Trump’s Administration is, well, negative:

2018, coal supplied 13%.

This continues to be good news for folks in general, but bad news for coal industry workers. Fortunately, retraining is certainly possible, and there are jobs.

For more information, see this Mark Sumner post on The Daily Kos.

Addendum: WaPo has a different way of looking at the above:

I’m not sure how to reconcile that Coal at 23%.

Are you in control of your use of technology, or is it controlling you? Sunny Fitzgerald has some tips in case you’re discovering the tail is wagging the dog:

I’m aware that late-night screen time impedes restful sleep and mindless morning scrolling can start the day on a negative note. I’d already implemented numerous mental health and sleep strategies: turned off notifications, removed most social media apps from my phone, tried various meditation practices, limited caffeine to early morning hours and more. Yet, since the early days of the pandemic, I’ve frequently caught myself bingeing on bad news. …

Additionally, according to Presnall, content is increasingly designed to “trigger hyperarousal by playing on our more primitive emotions — fear and outrage” which activates the survival centers of our brain. So, we continue looking for answers by clicking on recommended content rather than searching separately for every piece of information. And in doing so, we “reinforce the [artificial intelligence or algorithm behind the platform] to think that this is the type of news we want” — unintentionally attracting more of the same.

Rather than relay Fitzgerald’s tips – you can go to their article for that – I’d like to note how this resonates with my readings on manipulative communications strategies. As Fitzgerald notes from one of her experts, most web sites are deliberately designed to be sticky, sticky to your brain. They want your attention, because then they can pound on you with ads.

All without your realizing it.

Similarly, as Garvey notes in The Persuaders, the goal of commercial ad creators and political messaging operations is to manipulate your behavior, without your knowledge, to do what they want – spend money, vote their way, think their way.

I’m not saying they’re always wrong, even if they are, but, far more importantly, be aware. Regardless of whether you trust the source or not, try to always split off part of your mind to monitor how information is being communicated to you, whether information you know should be present is omitted, and the stylistic signals that someone is being less than fully honest. It’s a process to learn, the signs you can both learn about and learn on your own, and forming the habit can take a lot of effort.

But it lets you be you, and not someone’s thumb puppet.

If you haven’t read the late Rep John Lewis’s goodbye editorial in The New York Times, go do so.

Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.

You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.

Learning. There is so much of it to do, and so many people think they’re done when they’re done with school.

Don’t be one of them.

That would be the bar exam, necessary in most American states for practicing law. Professor Ilya Somin on The Volokh Conspiracy makes the case, boosted by the problematic risks and logistics of taking the bar exam in the midst of a pandemic:

The standard argument against diploma privilege is that the bar exam requirement is needed to protect consumers from incompetent lawyers. But there is no evidence that bar exams actually achieve that goal, as opposed to serving as a barrier to entry that protects incumbents in the profession from competition. The quality of legal services in Wisconsin has not suffered from its longstanding diploma privilege policy. Bar records indicate that attorneys in that state have disciplinary records similar to those in other states.

Such results are not surprising. The truth is that the bar exam is a test of arcane memorization, not a test of whether the applicant is likely to be a good attorney. That’s why, as my co-blogger Orin Kerr puts it, “when it [the exam] is over you can forget everything you just learned.”

For that reason, I have long advocated the abolition of bar exams …

I’m not sure what life would be like without the looming wall of the bar exam for new lawyers. I’m a cautious fan of hurdles, marking an accomplishment, and the societal mythos bestowing on those who make it over the hurdle with both opportunities and responsibilities – such as being an Officer of the Court. I think, sometimes, that I might have benefited from such formalities.

But maybe not. I was completely mystified by the celebration of graduating high school. I was just glad to be gone. I suppose I should have gone to the graduation ceremony for University, but I believe I was quite ill at the time – and didn’t feel like I was part of a community in any case.

But extraordinary exams such as the bar are not exclusively about testing knowledge that can be looked up just as easily; it’s also about putting together the gumption to actually sit and pass it. Much like the despised long hours for doctors during their internships, big, big challenges are necessary for lawyers who may find themselves in charge of matters involving large sums of money – or the liberty and lives of defendants.

It looks like the scientists who work on seeing small things may have hit the bottom of the turtle stack (“It’s turtles all the way down, doctor!”):

A Cryo-EM map of the protein apoferritin. Credit: Paul Emsley/MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (via nature)

A game-changing technique for imaging molecules known as cryo-electron microscopy has produced its sharpest pictures yet — and, for the first time, discerned individual atoms in a protein.

By achieving atomic resolution using cryogenic-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), researchers will be able to understand, in unprecedented detail, the workings of proteins that cannot easily be examined by other imaging techniques, such as X-ray crystallography. [Nature]

Those blobs, above, are individual atoms on the surface of a protein.

OK, so, thinking about it, there is one more turtle to go – visualizing quarks. An electron is a quark, for example. They’re the bits of reality that are really indivisible, as I understand it.

But this is – pun intended – really cool.

I don’t know a thing about neuromorphic processors or the problems encountered in trying to do computer vision with them, yet this caught my eye:

The Intel Loihi neuromorphic processor.

[Yijing Watkins of Los Alamos National Laboratory] and her colleagues experimented with programming neuromorphic processors to learn to reconstruct images and video based on sparse data, a bit like how the human brain learns from its environment during childhood development. “However, all of our attempts to learn eventually became unstable,” said study senior author Garrett Kenyon, also a computer scientist at Los Alamos.

The scientists ran computer simulations of a spiking neural network to find out what happened. They found that although it could learn to identify the data it was trained to look for, when such training went uninterrupted long enough, its neurons began to continuously fire no matter what signals they received.

Watkins recalled that “almost in desperation,” they tried having the simulation essentially undergo deep sleep. They exposed it to cycles of oscillating noise, roughly corresponding to the slow brain waves seen in deep sleep, which restored the simulation to stability. The researchers suggest this simulation of slow-wave sleep may help “prevent neurons from hallucinating the features they’re looking for in random noise,” Watkins said. [Inside Science]

By introducing noise, it seems to me – conceptually – that there’s a reduction in the purity requirements of the processors. That is, it permits a certain amount of fuzziness or abstraction in order to identify some object as a member of this or that category.

The interesting part of the article is the notion that any sentient creature will need deep sleep in order to have a usable cognitive apparatus – and that’s the rough equivalent of sleep.

The funny things you run across in White House transcripts. This is the same one in which alien DNA is mentioned, which falls into the category of shocking but not surprising, but this one is surprising:

[President Trump]: Today, I’m proud to announce one of the most important deals in the history of U.S. pharmaceutical industries. My administration has reached a historic agreement with a great American company — you remember this company; it’s called — from the good, old camera age, the old days — to begin producing critical pharmaceutical ingredients. It’s called Kodak. And it’s going to be right here in America.

So I want to congratulate the people in Kodak. They’ve been working very hard. Members of my administration are present in Rochester right now — Rochester, New York — a good place. And they’re trying to finalize this groundbreaking deal, and they will be announcing this deal. …

With this new agreement, my administration is using the Defense Production Act to provide a $765 million loan to support the launch of Kodak Pharmaceuticals. It’s a great name, when you think of it. Such a great name. It was one of the great brands in the world. Then people went digital, and Kodak didn’t follow. But now, under very extraordinary leadership, they are following and they’re doing something that’s a different field, and it’s a field that they’ve really hired some of the best people in the world to be taking care of that company and watching that company — watching over it. But it’s a breakthrough in bringing pharmaceutical manufacturing back to the United States.

Given the corruption of the Trump Administration, I have to wonder if Kodak’s using a kick-back scheme to get a needed injection of money.

For the record, Eastman Kodak (KODK) is up more than 300% today as I write this.

And, remember, especially for younger readers, for Trump’s generation, Kodak is a hallowed, iconic name, and there was widespread shock when Kodak imploded due to the advent of digital photography. In that sense, this may simply be Trump’s way of trying to return to the past.

Or maybe he invested in Kodak just prior to this announcement.

Or maybe, just maybe, Eastman Kodak has the capability to do what they’re being asked to do. Old style photography manufacturing did involve a certain amount of chemical expertise, after all. And, honestly, I hope that’s the case here.

But I won’t be surprised if we see Trump in court over this deal, either as President or personally.

On this thread, in case you feel like North & South America are the dens of iniquity, while the rest of the world is in recovery, don’t be so sure:

“Corona is coming back with all its might,” warned Bavarian state premier Markus Söder, according to German news site Merkur.

In France, new cases hit an average of 850 over the past three days — nowhere near the average of 2,582 in April. But the Health Ministry noted that recent progress has been erased, and Health Minister Olivier Véran warned of as many as 500 active clusters.

Remember the portulaca, or possibly pursulane as one reader suggested? Here it is, a month later:

It prospers.

If you simplify reality and assume that every driver has an N chance of having an accident – say, hitting and killing a pedestrian – then it seems likely that increasing the number of drivers and trips will end up killing more people.

And that seems to be the salient conclusion of this National Bureau of Economic Research report:

While ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft provide convenient transportation and flexible job opportunities, a new study suggests that these benefits may also come with a number of costs. Fatalities among automobile occupants and pedestrians, gasoline consumption, and traffic congestion have all risen since the ride-hailing services were launched in 2010, while public transportation ridership has fallen.

There are lots of caveats, of course – correlation vs causation, other factors such as smartphone distractions, and they think accident rates might go down as drivers gain experience.

I doubt it. I cannot help but note that ride hailing does not result in a reduction of trips, but in an increase in trips, speaking intuitively. Contrast this to mass transit, such as buses and subways, where there’s one driver responsible for far more passengers.

Of course there’s going to be more accidents with ride hailing.

Perhaps Uber, Lyft, and all the others should be subject to an additional tax to recover the productivity of those who are killed by them.

Nutation:

Astronomical nutation is a phenomenon which causes the orientation of the axis of rotation of a spinning astronomical object to vary over time. It is caused by the gravitational forces of other nearby bodies acting upon the spinning object. Although they are caused by the same effect operating over different timescales, astronomers usually make a distinction between precession, which is a steady long-term change in the axis of rotation, and nutation, which is the combined effect of similar shorter-term variations. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Hansen’s Star Map And The Precession Of The Equinoxes Circle,” Wally Motloch, Graham Hancock:

From CNN/Politic’s Stephen Collinson:

It also emerged Monday that Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien, who works in the President’s mask-free West Wing, tested positive for the coronavirus, in a sign of how flaunting basic precautions leaves no one safe from infection even if such steps are politically unpalatable.

[Bold mine.]

That would be flout. Flauting basic precautions would be hubristic. Overly dramatic. Chewing the scenery, even. Nom Nom Nom.

My Arts Editor tells me this is an old standard. I think it’s great.

When it comes to controlling the Presidential pardon power, it appears Rep Adam Schiff (D-CA) is ahead of me, according to Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith on Lawfare:

Rep. Adam Schiff’s bill, entitled “Abuse of the Pardon Prevention Act,” would do two basic things. First, for pardons for a “covered offense,” it would require the attorney general to submit to designated congressional committees all Justice Department materials related to the prosecution for which the individual was pardoned and all materials related to the pardon. It would also require the president to submit to the relevant committees all pardon-related materials within the Executive Office of the President. Covered offenses include offenses against the United States arising “from an investigation in which the President, or a relative of the President, is a target, subject, or witness”; offenses related to refusals to testify or produce papers to Congress; and offenses under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (false statements), § 1505 (obstruction), § 1512 (witness tampering) or § 1621 (perjury), if the offense related to a congressional proceeding or investigation.

Second, the Schiff bill would criminalize bribery in connection with the issuance of a pardon. It would do so by amending the criminal prohibition on bribery, 18 U.S.C. § 201, to apply it with a plain statement to the president and vice president, and by making clear that under the bribery statute, the granting of a pardon or commutation is an “official act” and any such act of clemency is also “anything of value.” In effect, this amendment would criminalize the offer of a grant, or the grant, of pardons as part of a corrupt exchange.

Much like my thought, it doesn’t forbid the act a priori, but is an implicit threat that if the pardon power is misused, then it’s criminalized and becomes a matter not for the political arena, but for law enforcement and the courts.

Much less entertaining, but probably for the best.