342/350 cases in the Duke outbreak were vaccinated. We absolutely have to shift messaging away from “vaccines mean you won’t get COVID” to “vaccines mean you won’t die alone in an ICU bed.” Tweet by KSV @KSVesqI help companies comply with employment laws. Mom to two fantastic girls (and one pug). Color commentary for @steve_vladeck. Co-host @inlocoparentsAustin, TX

“They want to convey not just authority, but intimidating authority,” said Katherine L. Kuzminski, a military policy expert at the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington,

I’ve been in a bad mood for the last couple of weeks, bouncing back and forth between anger and depression over the state of our environment, although, I’m learning that turning the news off does help. When I was in my late twenties, the slogan “Don’t trust anybody over thirty” became popular, popular, at least, with people far enough under thirty to feel safe in saying it. Now those same people seem to be saying, “Don’t trust the new young activists, they are too radical.” I think that they were right in the first place; “Don’t trust anybody over thirty, we talk a good game but we know we won’t be around when the check for our splurging off the failing environment comes due.”

In the meanwhile, the twenty-year anniversary of 9-11 came and went. I’m surprised at how little I’m emotionally affected by 9-11, Michele and I were in Italy and we both feel like we missed one of the seminal events of the last fifty years. Yeah, we saw it on TV – over and over and over again, ad nauseam – like everybody else but we were watching from Italy, in a different emotional world.

Google tells me that it was California’s Senator Hiram Johnson who first said, “The first causality of war is the truth.” Johnson was a Republican and an isolationist and I guess I am an isolationist also. I’m reluctant to say that because isolationists had such a bad name during my formative years, growing up in the aftermath of World War II. But I am an isolationist; I think that our almost constant state of war is destroying our country and has perverted our government. The mainstream media likes war and has promoted it from, at least, the time Hearst and Pulitzer used their papers to push us into war with Spain over the fabricated charge that Spain sunk the battleship, USS Maine.

Now, everything we hear or read or are shown about the Taliban for the last twenty years screams that the Taliban are irrationally evil, especially in their relationship with women. All of that may be true but they won an essentially bloodless war. Heavily outgunned, the Taliban just strolled into power, so they must be doing something right. As the Taliban strolled in, thousands of Afghanis, the ones that had bet on the wrong side, ran the other way, trying to get out of the country.

Looking at all the pictures of those refugee families coming into the US, my first thought is what a culture shock it must be. But, thinking about it, these are people, for whom the new Afghanistan was working and most of them are probably better educated and way richer than the average refugee. The United States, – alone, not counting other countries and NGOs – poured $145 billion into Afghanistan, much of it in easy to lose cash. Afghanistan’s government was corrupt even before that money was thrown at what we considered Afghanistan’s problems, willy nilly, and the $145 billion didn’t all go into road repair and building schools, much of it went into people’s pockets. Accordingly, most of these refugees are rich, educated abroad, and more worldly than I had been giving them credit for and I suspect that they will do well in the so-called first world.

I’m vaccinated and I’m trying to get a booster to be more vaccinated, but I am also starting to come to the realization that the Covid vaccines which we thought were so magical are actually making the pandemic worse. The Covid vaccine might prevent you from getting Covid in some cases – maybe even most cases – but the biggest advantage seems to be that it increases our odds of not becoming seriously ill or ending up on a ventilator. ABC did a poll of 50 hospitals in 17 states and came up with 94% of the people in ICU wards were unvaccinated because unvaccinated people get sicker than vaccinated people. The vaccine minimizes the effects of Covid, but it doesn’t always prevent people who are exposed to Covid from getting it and then spreading the COVID-19 virus to others. In the meanwhile, we vaccinated people, thinking we are safe, get together inside with other vaccinated people some of who may or may not be infected. That’s the problem, if one of us is infected, it is less likely that we will know we are infected if we are vaccinated and, it seems to me, that will make us more likely to spread the disease.

To leave with some good news, although good news may not be the right way to put it, news that made me smile is probably better. Yesterday, I started seeing pictures on Twitter of celebrities dressed like they were going to a costume ball, and it soon became obvious that this was the evening of the Met Gala, a major fashion event in New York. This is not something I would normally be familiar with, but I am because Lewis Hamilton goes every year, posting pictures on his Twitter feed, and, you know, he’s Lewis Hamilton. The Gala is all about fashion, one of Lewis’s passions (along with driving very fast cars very fast). If you don’t know what the Met Gala is, think about the Academy Awards Red Carpet without the Academy Awards. This year Lewis bought a table and invited seven young Black designers. At a cost of $30,000 per ticket, that’s a lot of money; talk about putting your money where your mouth is, this is it.

Surprisingly, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was also there, sitting at the head table. She and her partner were specifically invited by the Met and their tickets, I read, were comped. I’m very happy to say that AOC had the cajones to stay on message but I’m not surprised. AOC is one of the bravest, if not the bravest, politicians I’ve ever seen, always willing to talk truth to power. Willing to walk into a room of extraordinarily rich people and tell them they should pay taxes.

While Anna Wintour is the main poobah of the Gala, there were four co-hosts, poet Amanda Gorman, Timothée Chalamet who plays Paul Atreides in  Denis Villeneuve’s new Dune movie, Grammy-winning singer Billie Eilish – who wore an Oscar de la Renta gown on the condition that the designer would no longer use real fur – and tennis champion Naomi Osaka. They are all under thirty which may be why AOC was invited. To circle back, fashion seems to be an industry that is willing to trust people under thirty. I hope the trust people under thirty sentiment catches on. We need to listen to young people to save the world, it is becoming obvious that we, the older, supposedly more mature generations, are not going to do it.

Finally, Happy Wednesday and Congratulation to Governor Gavin Newsom for surviving the truly stupid, wasteful, recall.  

I

Public reason requires that the moral or political rules that regulate our common life be, in some sense, justifiable or acceptable to all those persons over whom the rules purport to have authority. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, October 24, 2017 

True story: I’ve been throwing a lot of birdseed on the ground lately. One of the nasty side effects of any drought is that less foliage, especially grasses, means less seed. With less seed available in the wild, more birds come to our yard looking for food. The birds are going through the seed in the birdfeeder more quickly and, as soon as I toss a large tumbler of birdseed on the ground, all kinds of ground feeders show up; their hunger making them braver. The Juncos are always the first to show up and then the local Steller’s Jays. Recently, they have been joined by several gentle Mourning Doves, and, then tentatively, a couple of families of quail, the little downy puffballs of spring now as big as their parents.

But the biggest eaters, by far, are two squirrels – neither Michele nor I are any good at identifying squirrels so there may be more than two but there are only two at a time, and they are slightly different – who Michele has named Hoover and Lux. A couple of days ago I threw some seeds out, and Michele laughed at Hoover who was immediately there, sucking up seed. She said something like, “Hoover, you are a pig, hoovering everything up.” Michele’s phone said, “Why isn’t the narcissist hoovering me?” We were both shocked, where did that come from? And what the hell is hoovering, anyway? If you’ll Google hoovering, it will tell you hoovering is a manipulation tactic that someone might use to suck you back into a potentially toxic relationship. Michele said, “Holy shit, that’s me and Veronica!” It was almost instantly obvious to both of us, it exactly describes what she had been talking about for the last two or three weeks.

Several years ago, Michele was asked over to a woman’s house in a nearby town and that evening, over dinner, she told me how isolated this unhappy woman was. Over the next couple of years, Michele visited the woman probably about once a month, even taking her to the hospital for a minor procedure when there was nobody else, but, increasingly, Michele has come home feeling used and slightly put down. Recently, Michele has drifted away because the relationship seemed increasingly toxic, and Veronica would call and ask Michele to come over for some reason, the last couple of times it was to get some vegetables which Veronica had a surplus of. Then Michele got mauled by a couple of dogs and, when she told Veronica she was hurt and couldn’t come over, the calls stopped. It was hurtful and Michele wondered out loud why Veronica didn’t call anymore. Now we know.

Another true story: a week or two ago, I got an email suggesting a book from a little-known – to me, at least – publisher, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. My first reaction was, Yes! I want that book, right now and that sort of took me back. I rarely have that sort of reaction, that joyously extreme. I asked Michele if she could guess what the book was about and, and then realized that couldn’t have possibly guessed and either could I have. This book is so perfect and so far out of left field. I bought it immediately.

As an aside, my first thought was that this must be a scam and I didn’t want to answer an email I hadn’t solicited or know the sender, so I didn’t click through the email. I googled the publisher and bought the book that way. End aside.

There is an old joke about a golfer who didn’t shower after his round of golf, I’ll call him Budd.
Every Saturday, Budd played golf with a group of friends and after their round of golf, he would go directly to the bar while his buddies went to the locker room, showered, and changed, before joining him for a round of drinks. Because they were often alone, Budd and the bartender become quite friendly. One day the bartender asked him,
“Budd, you seem like a meticulous guy, why don’t you shower after your Saturday round? It seems out of character.”
“ Well, Biff, I’ve got a small penis and I’m a little embarrassed to be seen naked in the shower.”
“Oh. does it work?”
“Do you mean, ‘Can I have sex?’ Yeah, sure”
“Uh…How would you like to trade for a dick that looks good in the shower?”

When the Americans invaded in 2001, the Taliban did not control the entirety of the country. Twenty years later, as the US departs, the Taliban control all of Afghanistan A Tweet by Yalda Hakim @BBCYaldaHakim Anchor and Correspondent. Host of BBC World News’ Impact with Yalda Hakim.https://yaldahakimfoundation.org

Fuck right off with your pat answers blaming one party for Afghanistan and exonerating your favorite politician. This is a generational failure, and they’re all to blame — Biden, Bush, Trump, Obama, all of their generals, all of them. A Tweet by Noah Shachtman @NoahShachtman Soon: @RollingStone. Back in the day: @thedailybeast, @Wired, @ForeignPolicy, @BrookingsFP. no************@********il.ch Wherever

What’s happening in Afghanistan currently is a humanitarian crisis. Let’s be clear: there has never been, and will never be, a U.S. military solution in Afghanistan. Our top priority must be providing humanitarian aid & resettlement to Afghan refugees, women, and children. A Tweet by Rep. Barbara Lee @RepBarbaraLee Progressive Democrat representing the #EastBay. Promoting justice for all, peace, & human rights. @ProChoiceCaucus Co-Chair. Washington, DC and Oakland

I’m genuinely shocked that the Taliban took over Afghanistan so quickly. It took the North Vietnamese two years to take South Vietnam after we left, the Taliban have done it as fast as they can drive from provincial capital to the next provincial capital to, now, Kubal. After about 2011, it seemed obvious to me that we were not going to be able to win this war but, judging from my reaction today, I must have still believed the propaganda. I had no idea that, after twenty years, we were leaving with the so-called official Afghan Army comparatively that much worse off than when we got there.

We are constantly told that we have the best military in the world, but, it turns out that we have a military that only looks good in the shower. We may have the most high-tech, best-equipped military in history but we still can’t win a war. We outspend everybody, we even spend more than the next nine nations put together and we haven’t won a war since 1945 (unless you count Korea and Iraq in which, I guess, we weren’t actually trying to win, just to push the enemy back to where they started which we did, and Grenada.) For twenty years – and still counting – we were told we were winning this war and we weren’t. Don’t get me wrong, we can still win battles, we can still kill more of them than they can of us, we just can’t actually win the war.

If that sounds too harsh, if you think it’s a political problem, if you think the military’s hands were tied, whatever, then why didn’t the generals say, “We can’t do what you want without more men, more school teachers, more tanks, more whatever…” But, for twenty years, no general did that, they took the job, all of them. Either they knew they couldn’t win under those conditions and said “Fuck it, it’s a promotion and I’m going to go to work as a lobbyist for Lockheed/Martin anyway.” or they were too stupid to understand the problem. I’m going to go with the second option. I think that our military leadership is a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Our military leadership, probably from about Colonel up, had no idea that the Taliban were winning the war, our military leadership thought they were doing great.

The Taliban got stronger while we were fighting them and nobody seemed to notice. The grunts must have noticed but the brass were so confident that they didn’t listen to them. Nobody even made plans for getting out of Dodge on the outside chance that the Taliban might win. The other analogy that comes to me is that of a narcissist. The military, and probably State Department, leaders were so sure that they were – and still are – right and doing well that they only listened to the Afghan toadies that told them how great they were. Surprisingly, shockingly, actually, we didn’t learn anything from the Vietnam disaster.

Now we are being told that the problem is the Afghan senior leadership which is corrupt. Sure, that’s a factor, but the big problem is that it is our leadership that is corrupt. Our entire military system is corrupt, including Congress, who thinks the answer is to increase the budget by twenty-five million over the existing 778 billion budget. It’s sickening, infuriating, sad, and sort of terrifying. Happy Monday.

pars pro toto/pärz ˌprō ˈtōtō/ 1. a part or aspect of something taken as representative of the whole.” the magical law of pars pro toto” Google’s English dictionary by Oxford Languages.

A couple of days ago, Michele and I joined Mike Iverson on an almost empty Stanford Campus to see a group of stone spheres.

Like many wonders in my life, great and small, I wouldn’t have known about this if it hadn’t been for Mike. He has been one of the most influential people in my life. I met him when I was a freshman in High School where he introduced me to smoking cigarettes and, maybe fifteen years later, introduced me to smoking pot (we weren’t still in High School). He was my first backpacking buddy, and in 1973, he took me to Death Valley for my first time – camping up a long, rough, dirt road to the Mahogany Campground at 8110 feet, in my new BMW Bavaria I should add – igniting my lifetime love. We listened to classical music together and, when Mike worked in a hi-fi store, spent days listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon on different speakers. For a while, Mike worked in a nursery and I was introduced to a new world of plants and especially cactus and succulents. In 1959, Mike told me about a photo show at the Stanford Union where I first saw Ansel Adams and started to fall in love with photography, and last week, he introduced me to a group of stone spheres in the newish Stanford Science and Engineering Quad. The spheres, together, are titled Pars pro Toto and they are terrific.

But first, an aside. Surrounding the new Science and Engineering Quad is sort of a mini-history of Silicon Valley’s second wave and makes a good advertisement for Stanford’s place in that universe.

Bordering the quad on the northeast is the James and Anna Marie Spilker Engineering and Applied Sciences Building which houses the Edward L. Ginzton Laboratory. According to Stanford, James Spilkera Jr. was a central figure in the technical development of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and Edward L. Ginzton was the co-founder of Varian Associates.

On the northwest is the Shriram Center for Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering, named for Ram and Vijay Shriram who contributed $61 million towards the building. BTW, Ram has a hyper-brief, hyper-enigmatic Wikipedia page saying only that he was born 1956/57, then jumping to Early Life which only says Shriram holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Loyola College, Chennai of the University of Madras, and finally, ending under Career, it says He is a founding board member of Google and…He is also on the board of directors of Alphabet (Google), Paperless Post, Yubico, Abacus.AI, Antheia, GoForward, and EasyPost.

To the southwest is the Jerry Yang & Akiko Yamazaki Environment + Energy Building (Y2E2) which, Stanford says, was the first large-scale, mixed-use, high-performance building at Stanford to house cross-disciplinary teams and programs with teaching and research focused on sustainability. According to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Jerry Yang is the co-founder of Yahoo!, and Akiko Yamazaki, is chairman of the board, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco and co-founder, Wildlife Conservation Network.

Finally, to the southeast, is the Huang engineering building and the Terman Engineering Library. Jensen Huang’s Link-In page says I founded NVIDIA with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem to solve the problem of 3D graphics for the PC. Our invention of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market, redefined modern computer graphics, and revolutionized parallel computing. GPU computing went on to ignite modern AI — the next era of computing — with the GPU acting as the brain of computers, robots, and self-driving cars that can perceive and understand the world…We’re hiring, with openings in every corner of our company – looking for talented, driven, and adventurous people who want to tackle grand challenges that are hard to solve, matter to the world, and bring us joy.

As an aside to the aside, except for Spilker, who was born in Philadelphia, every one of these building eponyms – I tried namesakes but was told by Google that eponyms is a better word, a word, BTW, I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard before – came here as immigrants and changed the world. They are Silicon Valley royalty. End asides.

Between these buildings is a rather non-descript quadrangle or Quad, as now seems to be the universal shorthand, that is largely concrete pavers covering the roof over a warren of semi-underground labs that connect the buildings. This expanse of beige is enlivened by Pars pro Toto, twelve stone spheres, ranging in size from sixteen inches to eight feet, a site-specific art installation by Alicja Kwade. Alicja Kwade is a Polish woman artist living in Berlin but who works all over the world. She reminds me a little of Christo in her self-marketing abilities and the power of her art over the landscape. This miniature landscape and these stone spheres remind me both of Christo’s running fence in Marin County and The Umbrellas that he put up on the 5 straddling Tejon Pass.

Like the yellow umbrellas at Tejon pass, which is the only Christo installation I’ve actually seen in person, it is surprising how much presence the spheres have. Even from hundreds of feet away, as we enter the Quad, walking down an unnamed, palm tree colonnade, the spheres stand out. While we were admiring one of the spheres – I think it was Red Fire, a fine-grained, deep rusty red, sedimentary rock formed about 750 to 700 million years ago in what would become northwestern India – a woman approached us to talk about the installation. It turns out that she is on the committee that selects Stanford’s outside art and she was thrilled that we were thrilled. It seems that this is the first of two major art installations that Stanford is installing.

This installation cost was one million dollars which seems like a bargain given that a Jeff Koons’s Rabbit just sold for $91,075,000. It must have taken a good part of the cost to find, quarry, and shape each sphere, each of which comes from a different location. One of the things our impromptu guide especially liked was the artist’s method of locating the spheres. In her Artist Statement, Kwade says The positioning of the globes was determined by chance: The artist threw tiny spheres onto a model of the Stanford Science and Engineering Quad to dictate placement. This gesture implies a higher being playing marbles with these planet-like spheres, creating a new universe. The arrangement also references billiard breaks, a real-world action used to visualize quantum analogs.

This week, in which the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report came out and Afghanistan’s collapse is accelerating, it was especially comforting to be distracted. Congrats, Stanford.