May 16, 2024
Thursday Open Comments
With advance apologies, today I’m taking a detour to talk about election news. This item comes from the news site that poaches content from The New York Times and other local papers.
I don’t care one whit about horserace news, which is the unfortunate bread and butter of news reporting at this point in our national calendar. Every poll that was commissioned gets overinterpreted—way, way overintepreted. It’s a lot like stock market reporting: anything from a marginal change to a big one, up or down, receives a silly description about how it means investors are thinking about…well…something. The reporter or editorial board just plug in whatever they happen to have as personal causes and bellyaches. Most of the day-to-day number changes are so muddled by everyone’s different motives on a given day for millions of marginal decisions that the bottom-line changes are completely meaningless.
But I guess if you’re in the journalism business, you’ve got to fashion some sort of narrative to the whole thing for consumer amusement, since consumer enlightenment here is out of the question.
My main complaint is that if you’ve read one such story, you’ve read them all. They’re formulaic and laden with clichéd thinking. This is the link to the story, Biden Promised Normal. The enthusiastic cheerleading for one side doesn’t show up in its birthday suit until around the tenth ‘graph:
Mr. Biden’s lengthy list of accomplishments has done little to assuage frustration over high prices and pervasive concern about the economy, an issue that is consistently at the top of voters’ concerns. Infrastructure projects are underway across the country. America is aggressively pouring money into the establishment of facilities that manufacture semiconductors. Inflation is lower, and the economy has defied expectations.
Yes, “lengthy list of accomplishments”, like recklessly accelerating federal spending, destabilizing the electric grid with pie-in-the-sky green policies, dithering in the face of aggressive enemies abroad, and so on.
They seem to agree with the pollsters they cite that voters are interested in voting for Biden as opposed to voting against Trump. I think the negative voting preferences are going to be as high or higher than the last several presidential elections. I say that, of course, because the negative consideration will be why I vote against both Trump and Biden: I find them similarly unacceptable, but not identically so. But that’s just me, and no one called me up to ask me to explain the polling numbers so they could explain it in the NYT.
They also cite Biden-team pollsters and analysts “anonymously” who furnish tired tropes about voters not appreciating Biden’s greatness, but reckoning they’ll come around just in time. And there’s the tireless pollster and polling analyst Frank Luntz, cited saying typical Frank Luntz stuff. I can’t find much news in any of it.
Anyway, I think that’s all the horserace reporting I need for a few more months now. Whatever it is the voters decide and why are not things I’ve got any influence over. And the reasons they have for voting as they ultimately do are certainly more wide-ranging and diverse that the silly reporting presumes.
"I vote against both Trump and Biden: I find them similarly unacceptable, but not identically so."
One might also say "equally unacceptable, but not identically so." They are both 100% unacceptable. So are RFK, Jr., Jill Stein, and Cornell West. Every one of these candidates is either old, crazy, or both. (Not one is under age 70, which is marginally "old" but also correlates, in this context, with crazy.)
Today’s special animal friend is the African wild dog, Lycaon pictus. It is the largest native canine in Africa. This animal’s publicists have struggled to find a common name that gives the public a good impression. “Painted dog” and “painted wolf” are believed to generate good will, while people find “wild dog” off-putting. Phylogenetically, they’re pretty far off from the iconic gray wolf and domestic dog.
I’ll flatter this endangered animal – and use its scientific name - by calling it the painted wolf. Adults are 30 to 43 inches long and weigh 40 to 79 pounds. Their coats are pretty sleek and are splotted and blotched in patches of white, black, brown, gray, and buff. They lack an undercoat, and older individuals tend to lose their fur and be hairless. Their medium-length tail is white on the end. They have enormous ears, much larger, in proportion, than the vast majority of canid species.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGtpYaTkjiQ
They are known as “hypercarnivorous” and are very successful hunters of medium-sized antelope of many different species. In some habitats, packs have learned to kill larger adult herbivores such as buffalo and zebras. They can maintain a speed of 35 mph for long periods. As diurnal hunters, they compete with cheetahs and sometimes steal kills. They also eat rodents, hares, and birds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCI-qgPEbw4
Painted wolves are highly social. Packs average between 7 and 15 members, but groups up to 40 are known. Each pack is led by a dominant, monogamous pair. The pack hunts cooperatively, and also cares for young and injured and sick members, sharing all large kills – puppies first! – and regurgitating food to share with adults as well as young. Only the dominant pair is supposed to breed; this can be enforced by killing the puppies of subordinate females. Litters can be up to 16, and 10 is average. Males tend to stay with their natal pack, while females join another pack or form a new group with a mate. Painted wolves are very vocal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVpEt_jlFFI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVpEt_jlFFI
It’s a tough life for the painted wolves. They compete with many other predators, including all the large wild cats and hyenas. Many adults and puppies are killed by lions. Both cats and hyenas steal kills. Lifespan can be 10-12 years if an individual is very lucky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00KjjDqYxu8
It is estimated that there are 6,600 painted wolves in the wild. About 600 live in zoos. The wild population is very fragmented. The practice of females’ leaving their natal pack helps to reduce inbreeding, but some subpopulations are unlikely to last as genetic diversity declines. In addition to wild predators, they are also sometimes hunted by people, usually to protect domestic livestock, although conservationists blame most livestock kills on the large cats.
https://www.awf.org/wildlife-conservation/african-wild-dog