Over 200 miliion doses of approved COVID-19 vaccines have been administered to date in the US. Many mass vaccination sites are closing and many counties are declining additional shipments of the vaccines in light of the reduced demand. Meanwhile, outbreaks are crushing India and the US is housing tens of millions of AstraZeneca vaccine, which is not approved for domestic use yet.

We should ship it. (Probably not all of it to India, but we should ship every dose, today, and keep making more)

The “it’s the right thing to do” argument is fairly self-evident, but I also wonder if political backlash from helping other (non-European) countries might animate the hesitant of the ‘merikkaFurst’ crowd to switch gears and seek vaccinations. I wonder specifically if political polarization caused increased vaccine access (under President Biden) to generate increased hesitancy from GOP aligned citizens. And I also wonder if a move by Biden to provide vaccine supply to other Out-Groups (as these vaccine hesitant folks see them) might result in increased demand, simply out of a sense of aggrievement.

Shipping vaccine to India and the rest of the world seems to me like a good move. There may be a political price to pay in the short term however the policy wins (Public and Global Health, Diplomacy) seem like they could be worth it, even in the crassest of analysis.

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Sunrise, at Lake Baikal (Siberia). Photo by Sergey Ponomarev for the story at: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/science/neutrinos-lake-baikal.html

First post in a while; I cooked tonight.

The meal was pre-prepared — something S. had ordered as a kit to cook on Valentine’s Day (which was a week ago) — but it was still well put together. The kale salad was complicated (I typically just go with Gomasio, Vinegar and Avocado … cherry tomatoes if I’m feeling festive) but the ingredients worked really well together. The gf, v, Alfredo was the shocker though. Always ambivalent toward parsley, the bitterness of the fresh cut sprigs cut surprisingly well against the alfredo tonight. As favorite people of mine would say at sea, “fuckin’ yumm!’

Unclear if I’ve been using sketchy parsley or just sub-par alfredo all my life but I am making a note of the combination here.

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New digs!

I write this under the stars from our porch here in Oakland’s Lakeside. (Sirius, at least, is visible)

S. and I are finally moved-in to our new place. We picked up keys a week ago today, and had movers transfer numerous boxes and articles of furniture from yon to hither the following day. The three days that followed were spent cleaning up the former abode and disposing of years (a decade’s?) worth of tired accumulations. Because of this, I can report with informed sincerity that Alameda County’s waste disposal services are not wanting. (the Public Administration geek in me was highly impressed)

Since Friday we have mostly been working through unpacked boxes, finding homes for the items within, while acclimating the dogs to their new space. (We would take them with us to the old spot while cleaning)  They are handling it like champs. I am having a much more difficult time with all of the plants. Finding the right spot for a new plant or two — even when the species count is triple digits — is relatively easy in a given space, but finding the right spot for all the plants, suddenly, in a different space, is proving challenging. The simple truth is that we have too many plants. Some of them will die (and I’m okay with that) as a result of the move. For the most part, they have all been in subsistence-only conditions for the last week. Interestingly, I have observed radical growth from a few, despite the decline in the conditions they are used to. Stress as a catalyst for growth — hardly a new concept in biology but I rarely get to see it in that context. And it is lovely to behold.

In any event, tonight — with the living room mostly put together and our offices largely assembled to face the coming work week — we addressed the kitchen and I was able to cook a meal, the first meal, at the new abode. I write this, a testament to the fact that I can, no longer being focussed on the packing and preparing of the move to come, or the move that is ongoing — only on the move that just was. I am looking forward to settling down for a bit, improving things, and figuring out how we can make this place uniquely appropriate to our lives and sensibilities.

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currently reading: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter

last viewed: Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms

last full listen: Fender Rhodes Piano playlist by Spotify user 11152966639

 

 

I started Arlie Russell Hochshild’s Strangers In Their Own Land right at the start of the new year. I read the first 50 pages or so, pondering–the whole time–why I should care at all about what I was reading. (The book is about folks in rural Louisiana, and how one sociologist from UC Berkeley came to understand them by leaving her west coast bubble and truly engaging with them, in their land.) Snapshot from the cab of a pickup – stories told from a bayou living room. Oral cajun histories, mediated into a narrative of social exploration between two poles of the American political divide. I imagine the book eventually gets to some deeper points about how much we all have in common, despite our political differences, and in some undefined way, I am certain that was why I was reading it: I wanted to be reminded that we’re all in this together, we’re all good people, E pluribus unum and such.

The breaching of the US Capitol last week placed that idea in a very different space for me though. One much more distant, frankly. I find myself less empathetic, if not wholly disinterested, in GOP culture these days or in the work needed to understand “where they’re coming from” with the nonsense of the day. There seems to me to be some honest and responsible cadre of the GOP–maybe 5%–who understand the rot and the insanity and are willing to address it in good faith, and the remainder, if not fully bought in to various conspiracy theories or cult of personality are acquiescing at best, but more likely using and amplifying these trends for their own self-interested gain. My understanding is that in a sense, Strangers In Their Own Land was the first of many narratives to follow getting at ‘the trump voter we met at the diner‘ and it’s reportage ilk from the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. I wasn’t sure I needed any more word count on the subject though; after last Wednesday, I know I do not. I’ve seen enough. Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life is seeming much more suitable to this moment.

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Ahead of the Inauguration of Joe Biden this Wednesday, much reporting and commentary reminds us of pending protests at all 50 State capitals. For the record, I am 100% fine with protests from people distrustful of single-party rule over the next two years — or really, anything rooted in reality. I wonder though how much of the ‘Stop the Steal’ brain cancer is fueling this though and how much of it will be on display. I also wonder how much violence will be able to be done by folks using the protests for their own ends.

I also do not think the President is done trying to thwart the legitimate transfer of power. Even at this late hour.

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currently reading: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter
currently listening: Evermore by Taylor Swift

The polls closed tonight on the US Senate run-off elections in Georgia and I am fascinated by the distance I have maintained from the contest. The outcome will undoubtedly have consequences legislatively and beyond, however I am completely at peace at this moment.

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There is a California Buckeye Tree that grows in Strawberry Canyon (Berkeley, CA) that is quite singular – even if my hunch that it formed from two saplings is correct.

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I have spent the last week away from work and began 2021 with a focus on the house and back yard, working to improve and simplify things in form and function. It has been productive. Things feel quiet. Enough small details have been remedied that it feels like there has been a noticeable change. I am looking forward to occupying this stillness as much as possible and to keep slowly improving each room, and each thing.

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currently reading: The Beauty of Everyday Things, Soetsu Yanagi
last full listen: High in the Sky by the Hampton Hawes Trio

Below, books read this year.

Originally, my intention was to devote the year to current titles only. This lasted until September when I found newly released titles lacking and cracked open Michael Lewis’ The Fifth Risk which had been laying around unread for a couple of years. Looking back, I feel the experiment was worthwhile and I would recommend it, even though I do not intend to repeat it in 2021.

Not quite in order, and with hyperlinks for those I am most enamored of.

• The Education of an Idealist (Samantha Power)
• Why We Sleep (Matthew Walker, Ph.D)
• Why We’re Polarized (Ezra Klein)
• The Heap (Sean Adams)
• Agency (William Gibson)
• A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America (Phillip Rucker and Carol Leonnig)
• The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (Tony Ord)
• Surviving Autocracy (Masha Gessen)
• Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality (Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson)
• The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency (John Dickerson)
• Capital and Ideology (Thomas Piketty, translation by Arthur Goldhammer)
• Freedom: An Unruly History (Annelien De Dijn)
• The Fifth Risk (Michael Lewis)
• The Sourdough School: The Ground-Breaking Guide to… (Richard Hart, Vanessa Kimbell
• You’re Not Listening (Kate Murphy)
• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
• Give People Money (Annie Lowry)
• One Billion Americans: The Case For Thinking Bigger (Matthew Yglesias)
• Washington: A Life (Ron Chernow)
• Urban Jungle: Living and Styling With Plants (Igor Josifovic and Judith De Graaff)
• The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (Nicholas Carr)

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TL;DR:

The windmill palm (Trachycarpus fortunei) is one of the hardiest palms available to grow indoors or outside in the garden. This cold-hardy palm is also great for northern gardening climates as it can withstand freezing temperatures as low as 10 degrees. 

It is  a slow-growing plant that will take years to reach its full height of 6 feet indoors. Moreover, this plant is a great choice outside in the garden for water conservation, as it is drought-tolerant and resists pests.

Basically this plant is easy to grow and care for, as it grows well in full to partial sun and adapts well to most climates and soil types. The highly ornamental palm has stiff, fan-shaped leaves that are beautifully compacted and resplendently green, radiating from its stem on a sturdy trunk.

Here is what mine looks like:

For helpful plant tips and other gardening advice, hit me up.

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Follow up to previous post: initial numbers from election night looked like Trump over-performed polling averages between 3 – 5%. My calls for OH, NC and FL went the other way and lo as such, election day became election week. Final tallies TBD due to the closeness of GA and AZ. (and maybe WI — haven’t looked lately)

I’ve been returning periodically to the passage below from Heather Cox Richardson and mean to sit with it a while in the days to come:

This election was not particularly close, but pundits warn that the fact that 70 million Americans voted for Trump and 74 million and counting voted for Biden shows that we live in two very different Americas, and that, for all his talk of unity, Biden will have a hard time finding common ground with Trump supporters.

Pundits suggest that the two different political ideologies in America are about values and principles, but it actually seems that the primary difference between the two camps is between those who are living in a fictional world, created by generations of right-wing media, and those who are living in the real world, the so-called “reality-based community.” According to political historian Rick Perlstein, a scholar of the right, talk radio host Rush Limbaugh has been telling listeners that Democrats have stolen the election, and urging his listeners to abandon the Republican establishment, which did not sufficiently back Trump.

Entertainment personality Alex Jones is more extreme. He showed up to the Maricopa County, Arizona, counting center, where he told the crowd that “The Bidens are Communist Chinese agents” and urged listeners to fight “those scumbag Nazi bastards.” Jones owns a far-right conspiracy theory website aptly named InfoWars. According to an article by Veit Medick in Der Spiegel, about two-thirds of his income comes from the merchandise he sells to combat the conspiracies he talks about.

The Republicans’ alternative reality is quite literally deadly. Although 82% of Trump voters believe the pandemic is at least somewhat under control, today America had more than 122,000 new infections, and more than 1100 people died. An analysis by the Associated Press shows that 93% of the 376 counties with the highest numbers of coronavirus cases per capita voted for Trump.

source: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-6-2020

The emphasis is mine, but in a victory lap where Democrats keep mentioning “Science” in their speeches, and Republican activists are in front of polling sites yelling “fake news” it seems epistemology is an elephant in this room we share.