Linky Friday: Vibes, Real and Imagined Edition

Flight of Honor participants in Raleigh, NC are welcomed back by crowds. Photo by Rtphokie via Wikimedia Commons

[LF1] Convention Bounce Watch

The American Presidency Project has a handy-dandy chart of all the convention bounces – or, if you are John Kerry or Mitt Romney post-convention drop – going all the way back to LBJ vs Goldwater in 1964

Gerhard Peters. “The Post-Convention Bounce in Voters’ Preference.” The American Presidency Project. Ed. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California. 1999-2020. Available from the World Wide Web: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/324134

[LF2] Great Scott! A Scientist Reacts to Back to the Future

Our own Michael Siegel has a new video out science-splain’ the classic Back to the Future:

[LF3] Why Jackson Hole Is the Fed’s Biggest Shindig

From The New York Times:

From the NY Times: The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual conference in Wyoming gets a lot of buzz. Here’s why it matters for Wall Street and the economy.

To the uninitiated, it might seem weird that what is arguably the most important economic event in the world is held in remote Wyoming, two time zones away from the Federal Reserve’s Washington-based Board of Governors and 1,047 miles from its host, the Kansas City Fed. And the symposium itself is hardly your average conference. Loafers cede to cowboy boots. Attendees snack on huckleberry pastries (or swill huckleberry drinks) while discussing the latest economic papers.

But if Jackson Hole is a little bit incongruous, it is also unquestionably important, an invite-only gathering where paradigm-shaping research is presented and momentous policy shifts are announced. The event has long been an obsession on Wall Street.

This year will be no exception. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, is scheduled to speak Friday morning, and markets are waiting anxiously to parse his remarks for even the slightest hint about how much the Fed might cut interest rates at its meeting next month — and how quickly central bankers will reduce borrowing costs after that.

[LF4] Pause the Euphoria

Freddie deBoer from his Substack:

Once again, I lament the way that seriousness and pragmatism are coded as centrist, in this country, despite the fact that the American electorate is not in any meaningful or coherent sense centrist. (“Protect Social Security and Medicare and spend more on science and education and expand defense spending and cut my taxes and balance the budget” is not centrism.) The point is not that vibes don’t exist or don’t matter; they both exist and matter in politics. What’s serious and pragmatic is understanding that material conditions are the bedrock on which vibes grow. Biden’s age was clearly a huge impediment to his reelection chances, but the issue that has done the most to dictate the progress of this election is inflation, how much stuff costs, which is as material and concrete and visceral as political issues get. The fact that it’s slowed down so much recently makes Democratic victory possible. That presidents can’t control inflation just speaks to the unfortunate irrationality that underlies the system. What I can tell you for sure is that the low information Pennsylvania retirees who will determine the outcome of the election won’t vote based on who’s brat. And I am growing more and more frustrated with the number of educated progressives who respond with resentment and insult if you ever tell them, hey, maybe we should get actually serious for a little while and drop the fucking exhausting meme fixation.

Look –

Donald Trump has significantly outperformed polling in two consecutive presidential elections

The Electoral College favors the Republicans

Eventually, Kamala has to make her case in an unscripted and adversarial format, which she proved entirely incapable of doing in the 2020 primary

There’s still more than two months to go

Harris is doing better than I would have possibly thought a month or so ago. For that I’m very grateful. I feel increasingly hopeful about the election, and I hope to go the good news continues. But you all lived through Trump winning an election that you were certain he would lose

[LF5] About that Olympic boxing debate

Our old friend Erik Kain shares some thoughts: Imane Khelif And The Olympics: A Common Sense Approach To The Science Of Competitive Sports

[LF6]

On his 24Sight Substack Tom LoBianco reflects from having covered both conventions.

Texting with some folks afterwards and this morning, the read was it worked — down-home, a new message of Democratic patriotism, and not so overbearing that it overshadowed the real star of the show, who takes the stage tonight.

And he garnered some powerful moments, like his 17-year-old son crying proudly, “That’s my dad!”

Check in with my friend, Patrick Pfingsten, author of The Illinoize here on Substack, who I’ve been stringing for from the Illinois delegation breakfasts this week. We’re part of the growing world of independent reporting, staying in the trenches to keep you informed as you decide on who to pick come November and beyond.

It’s easy to get lost in programming inside a political convention, that’s much the design of these things. So I felt like it was time to call around a bit outside the building and run some checks, are Democrats really flipping reticent Republicans? The kind who haven’t gone full Never Trump, but also deeply, historically want their party back or something close to what Reagan used to represent for them.

The Democratic programming has clearly been aimed at that crowd (which is more sizable than you may think given the standard campaign rhetoric) — former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a conservative Republican, offered a permission slip to other conservatives in his speech last night, voting for Harris/Walz this cycle doesn’t mean revoking their Republican credentials.

But in my calls today, I didn’t hear much from my Republican sources indicating that this message is either getting through to disaffected Republicans or would work if it did…

Instead

The read I got from my R sources was this seems more aimed at depressing veteran conservatives, supporters of former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and other potential flips.

The January 6th presentation, with the powerful video and ever-jarring footage of a subset of Trump supporters attacking police while lawmakers fled, one source said, seemed aimed at dispiriting that target audience — either driving them to stay home or skip voting for president and vote Republican the rest of the way down the ballot, thereby denying Trump critically needed votes.

[LF7] Honey, not marmalade, is saving the real ‘Paddington Bear’

From the BBC:

The Andean bear’s conservation status is vulnerable. The bear’s main threats are retaliatory killings, habitat fragmentation and degradation, and the effects of climate change on the reproductive success of the species.
Bolivia and Peru are home to 70% of the Andean bear population, but the species can also be found in parts of Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina. It is the only bear species residing in South America and there are an estimated 2,500 to 10,000 mature bears in the wild, according to ecological models.

In contrast to Paddington Bear, who always keeps a marmalade sandwich tucked under his hat in case of a hunger emergency, the Andean bear feeds on bromeliads, exotic plants related to the pineapple, and other hard vegetative matter growing on the mountainside. But when there is not enough food in the forest, this opportunistic hunter may attack cattle, leading to conflict with farmers.

In San Lorencito, conflict with farmers has led to illegal retaliation killings, threatening the Andean bear’s long-term survival.
Witnessing the declining bear population in the region, Bolivian biologist Ximena Velez-Liendo came up with a plan to minimise conflict between farmers and bears. The solution? Beekeeping.
Velez-Liendo is the founder of the Andean Carnivore Conservation Programme (ACCP), a conservation project led by Chester Zoo in the UK along with other organisations, including WildCRU, Foundation Segré, Darwin Initiative and Whitley Fund for Nature.

The ACCP opened a communal apiary with 10 beehives in San Lorencito in 2018, which also served as a school for community members to learn the craft of beekeeping. The programme helped provide resources so each family could start their own apiary, as well as equipment to facilitate honey harvesting.

The aim was to provide the community with an alternative economic activity to cattle farming. Velez-Liendo established the beekeeping project in 2018 following a regional assessment which revealed that farming communities were killing one to two bears every year because they blamed the animals for killing their livestock. Most cattle deaths were attributed to the bear, even if other factors, such as diseases and mountain tumbling, were to blame, says the biologist.

“The objective was to reduce retaliatory killings of bears by reducing cattle farming, as well as to improve people’s attitude and increase tolerance towards bears,” says Velez-Liendo, also a research associate at the wildlife conservation research unit at the University of Oxford and Chester Zoo in the UK, based in Tarija.

“We do not provide the full cost of the apiary. We provide 70% of the total cost, and the beneficiary the remaining 30%,” says Velez-Liendo. “We found out that people value and care more than if it had been completely free.”

[LF8] The Legend of Tomato Sauce III

Food and Wine:

Cookbook author Marcella Hazan brought Italian cooking to American kitchens with singular style: simplicity combined with exactitude. Hazan was already an exalted contributor to Food & Wine when I became editor in chief in 1995. We were so proud to be the magazine where Hazan published her most personal and powerful stories. So I was surprised, in retrospect, to discover that Food & Wine never shared her recipe for Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter in print — until now. First published in The Classic Italian Cook Book in 1973, it was originally called Tomato Sauce III. Marcella also included it in her 1992 cookbook, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, with just four ingredients, not counting the pasta for serving. (This is the version adapted for the recipe.) It became hugely popular, spurring thousands of rave reviews and tributes to Marcella’s particular brand of genius.

The recipe is everything a home cook could ever want — good in any season (no need for fresh tomatoes, but if you have them, use them); minimal cleanup (just one pan); all the ingredients are available at any supermarket in America; it’s cheap; it can be doubled to feed a crowd. You don’t need knife skills — or any kind of skills, really. Your friends will think you’re an awesome cook because the stellar results belie the ease of preparation. In a saucepan, you put the tomatoes, 5 tablespoons of butter, and one whole onion cut in half, then bring them to a simmer, and cook for about 1 hour. You remove the onion and combine the sauce with gnocchi or a pound of pasta. When you taste it, there’s a surprising depth and silkiness because of that big hunk of butter.

With all that going for it, I now wonder, how did I pass up the opportunity to publish this perfect recipe? I searched my brain for the answer — and also reached out to Tina Ujlaki, Marcella’s longtime editor at Food & Wine. Perhaps I was a snob about using canned tomatoes? In the mid-’90s, when I arrived at Food & Wine, I believed that we should only cook with in-season ingredients. That explanation didn’t hold up, though, because I also learned at Food & Wine that anyone who turns their nose up at canned tomatoes is ignorant. Canned tomatoes are always preferable when vine-ripened tomatoes are out of season; preserved at the height of freshness, canned ones have more flavor and are more consistent. Did I think it was too simple, shrugging off the idea because it didn’t seem like enough of a recipe? That didn’t make sense, either, because we selected recipes by taste, not showiness or complexity, and, as we all know by now, this sauce tastes terrific. Ujlaki suggested there was an obvious reason: We never considered publishing the recipe because Hazan and her husband, Victor, didn’t propose it, and we always followed their lead.

[LF9] Where exactly are all the AI jobs?

After a fever-pitch in 2022, tech hiring has leveled out a bit. But AI will continue to permeate every industry in years to come, a Stanford report finds by Paige Gross.

In 2023, 1.6% of all United States-based jobs required AI skills, a slight dip from the 2% posted in 2022. The decrease comes after many years of growing interest in artificial intelligence, and is likely attributed to hiring slowdowns, freezes or layoffs at major tech companies like Amazon, Deloitte and Capital One in 2023, the report said.

The numbers are still greatly up from just a few years ago, and in 2023, thousands of jobs across every industry required AI skills.

What do those AI jobs look like? And where are they based, exactly?

Generative AI skills, or the ability to build algorithms that produce text, images or other data when prompted, were sought after most, with nearly 60% of AI-related jobs requiring those skills. Large language modeling, or building technology that can generate and translate text, was second in demand, with 18% of AI jobs citing the need for those skills.

Those skills were followed by ChatGPT knowledge, prompt engineering, or training AI, and two other specific machine learning skills.

The industries that require these skills run the gamut — the information industry ranked first with 4.63% of jobs while professional, scientific and technical services came in second with 3.33%. The financial and insurance industries followed with 2.94%, and manufacturing came in fourth with 2.48%.

Public administration jobs, education jobs, management and utilities jobs all sought AI skills in 1- 2% of their open roles, while agriculture, mining, wholesale trade, real estate, transportation, warehousing, retail trade and waste management sought AI skills in 0.4-0.85% of their jobs.

Though AI jobs are concentrated in some areas of the country, nearly every U.S. state had thousands of AI-specific jobs in 2023, the report found.

California — home to Silicon Valley — had 15.3%, or 70,630 of the country’s AI-related jobs posted in 2023. It was followed by Texas at 7.9%, or 36,413 jobs. Virginia was third, with 5.3%, or 24,417 of AI jobs.

Based on population, Washington state had the highest percentage of people in AI jobs, with California in second, and New York in third.

Montana, Wyoming and West Virginia were the only states with fewer than 1,000 open roles requiring AI, but because of population sizes, AI jobs still made up 0.75%, 0.95% and 0.46% of all of the state’s open roles last year.

[LF10] Palate Cleanser

Baby animals learning to stand