The Weird Times

Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Space

The Weird Times: Issue 24 October 25, 2020

High anxiety across America can probably be viewed from space.

There are only nine more days to what we all know will be a divisive, contested and chaotic election. Be prepared for what will happen in the weeks that follow. Here’s hoping for the institutions of democracy and the people that support them to hold against the chaos. Do your part - vote and convince others to vote too!

Make a Plan: How Getting Out the Vote has Become 2020’s Biggest Viral Challenge, Nicole Gillucci, Mashable, Oct 25, 2020

There is still time to help get out the vote.

Stand Up America

Rock the Vote

American Civil Liberties Union

Canada’s last breeding pair of endangered spotted owls found in valley slated for imminent logging. The federal government is legally obliged to respond to an Ecojustice petition calling for an emergency order to stop logging in the Spuzzum Valley, where two rare chicks hatched this year – Sarah Cox, The Narwhal, Oct 14, 2020

Spotted owls have all but vanished from B.C., the only place they were found in Canada. Biologists estimate there were once 1,000 spotted owls in southwestern B.C.’s old-growth forests of Douglas fir, western hemlock and western red cedar.

Today, following the destruction and fragmentation of much of their habitat, only three spotted owls are known to exist in the province’s wild. Until the breeding pair was discovered in the Spuzzum Valley, the three were thought to be individuals with no offspring. 

“The northern spotted owl is back from the dead in Canada — where once there was a flat line there is now a shimmer of hope,” Foy said. “What Canada does next in the way of protecting habitat may just tip the balance in favour of life.”

New Blood Test Accurately Predicts Which COVID-19 Patients Will Develop Severe Infection SciTechDaily, Oct 16, 2020 “Test could inform doctors on best treatment options.”

Scientists have developed, for the first time, a score that can accurately predict which patients will develop a severe form of Covid-19.

The study, led by researchers at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, is published in The Lancet’s translational research journal EBioMedicine.

The measurement, called the Dublin-Boston score, is designed to enable clinicians to make more informed decisions when identifying patients who may benefit from therapies, such as steroids, and admission to intensive care units.

Until this study, no Covid-19-specific prognostic scores were available to guide clinical decision-making. The Dublin-Boston score can now accurately predict how severe the infection will be on day seven after measuring the patient’s blood for the first four days.

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In Democracy in Chains, Nancy Maclean documents how the Koch brothers were involved in the Pinochet regime’s rewriting of the Chilean constitution with the express aim of creating “controls” on democracy in that document. Chile has suffered with it for over 40 years now.

So this news is now important:

Shopkeepers shut their windows and authorities moved to protect targets of possible vandalism as Chile yesterday prepared to mark the anniversary of the outbreak of rioting and social unrest last year. The milestone comes a week before a referendum on October 25 in which polls predict about two-thirds of Chileans will vote in favor of drawing up a new constitution. This was one of the central demands of protesters angered by issues such as rising prices, inequality, meagre pensions and poor public services. Many hope that a second wave of protests — with unrest already intensifying over the past week — will not be as disruptive as in 2019. Then, widespread arson, looting and vandalism caused about $4.6 billion in damage to public infrastructure. (via Financial Times)

Here in the US, the Kochs and their libertarian rightist allies have used court packing to achieve the goal of choking democracy and building a firewall of judges to protect their interests against the rising tide of democracy that seeks to control the power of the rich. They have succeeded. We may now need another forty years to undo the damage they have done to democracy.

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It's clear that the Republican party has been corrupted by right wing billionaires (Koch, Mercer, Edelman, etc.) joined (allied?) with Russian oligarchs representing the interests of Putin. Take a look at this 2018 Dworkin Report that documents Lindsey Graham’s Russia-linked donations. I wish someone would investigate Mitch McConnell’s finances.

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An idea whose time is coming: end minority rule in the United States of America.

The 53-State Solution: New states are the answer to America’s minority-rule problem, Simon Barnicle, The Atlantic, Feb 11, 2020.

“A better solution to the problem of minority rule would address it directly. Democrats—if and when they regain control of Congress—should add new states whose congressional representatives would likely be Democrats. In areas that are not currently states, like Washington, D.C., or territories like Puerto Rico, this could be done with a simple congressional majority. But Democrats should also consider breaking up populous Democratic states and “un-gerrymandering” the Senate. Perhaps there could be a North and South California, or an East and West Massachusetts. A new state of Long Island, an area that is geographically larger than Rhode Island, would be more populous than most of the presently existing states.”

…

“Demographic trends are such that a greater percentage of Americans are increasingly living in large states, which are disadvantaged in terms of representation. By 2040, it is estimated that 40 percent of Americans will live in just five states. Half the population will be represented by 18 Senators, the other half by 82.”

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New Yahoo News/YouGov poll: Half of Trump supporters believe QAnon's imaginary claims

A full 50 percent of President Trump’s supporters now believe the bizarre, made-up claims about an international ring of child sex traffickers at the core of the extremist conspiracy theory known as QAnon, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll — a disturbing sign of how susceptible partisans have become to bogus stories in an age of rampant polarization and unbridled social media.

The survey, which interviewed 1,583 registered voters from Oct. 16 to 18, shows that most of the registered voters (55 percent) say they’ve never heard of QAnon, including 44 percent of Trump supporters. And 59 percent of voters who have heard of QAnon describe it as “an extremist conspiracy theory with no basis in fact.” (The survey has a margin of error of about 4 percent.)

Yet these numbers understate the degree to which awareness and even acceptance of QAnon’s underlying falsehoods have permeated the right, regardless of how many unwitting adherents explicitly realize such fictions originate with QAnon itself.

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Many more Americans will be considered at risk of catching Covid-19 after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its guidance Wednesday. The agency now says that anyone who has spent a total of 15 minutes over 24 hours within six feet of an infected person will be considered a "close contact," and therefore at risk of catching and spreading the disease. The change could have a large impact on schools and workplaces, where such contacts are hard to avoid—Washington Post, Oct 21, 2020

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Stop wiping down surfaces and focus on bigger risks,Elizabeth Chang, Washington Post, Oct 22, 2020

“Finally, she said, it’s important to remember that “viruses have to have a host and they can’t replicate without one. So … the main place that’s going to be the source of virus in anybody’s household is going to be the people in it and not the surfaces or the physical environment.”

“Even if there’s virus kicking around on certain things,” she said, “that risk can really be mitigated practically by washing your hands.”

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Teen wins 25K for finding molecule that may disarm Coronavirus —Nicoletta Lanese, LiveScience, Oct 20, 2020

With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, a 14-year-old from Texas has won a national science competition for identifying a molecule that can bind to the virus and potentially disable it.

Anika Chebrolu, who hails from Frisco, used computer modeling to search for a compound that binds tightly to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein — a structure that juts off the coronavirus surface and plugs into human cells to trigger infection. In theory, such a compound should prevent the virus from infecting cells. When designing new antiviral drugs, scientists often perform computational studies, just like Chebrolu's, as a critical first step.

For her impressive work, Chebrolu earned first prize in the 2020 3M Young Scientist Challenge, a U.S.-based science competition for middle-school students. Chebrolu signed up for the contest months ago while still in middle school, with the initial intention of studying influenza, according to a video interview with KTVT, a CBS-affiliate.

Over rivers of stone and ancient ocean beds
I walk on twine and tire tread
My pockets full of dust, my mouth filled with cool stone
The pale moon opens the earth to its bones

Matamoros Banks, Bruce Springsteen

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Hot-button words trigger conservatives and liberals differently: Brain scans reveal the vocabulary that drives neural polarization —Science Daily, Oct 20, 2020

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University scanned the brains of more than three dozen politically left- and right-leaning adults as they viewed short videos involving hot-button immigration policies, such as the building of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, and the granting of protections for undocumented immigrants under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Their findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that liberals and conservatives respond differently to the same videos, especially when the content being viewed contains vocabulary that frequently pops up in political campaign messaging.

"Our study suggests that there is a neural basis to partisan biases, and some language especially drives polarization," said study lead author Yuan Chang Leong, a postdoctoral scholar in cognitive neuroscience at UC Berkeley. "In particular, the greatest differences in neural activity across ideology occurred when people heard messages that highlight threat, morality and emotions."

Cruz named Man of the Year by his peers – Do-Hyoung Park, MLB.com, October 23, 2020.

On Thursday, the MLB Players Association named Cruz as the recipient of the 2020 Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award, annually awarded to the player that his peers "most respect based on his leadership on the field and in the community."

"We should feel that responsibility that we need to help," Cruz said earlier this year. "God gave us the blessing to play this beautiful game and to be in a better situation than most of the families in the Dominican, so it's a beauty to be able to help."

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Laid off on Franklin Street

my name is, thank you
my name is, thank you
my badge number is, thank you
you don't know what I feel, thank you
you laid me off, thank you
laid me off, thank you
you let the people down, thank you
you with your big job, thank you
big house big car, thank you
you chop off one hand, thank you
want me to do my job with the other, thank you
you hurting morale, thank you
you laid off my girl, thank you
she come to live with me, thank you
I can't refuse OT, thank you
I got to feed the grandbaby, thank you
we need our service back, thank you
we need it all over the place, thank you
we need service people, thank you
we public servants, thank you
stop cutting the bus, thank you
stop laying people off, thank you
stop doing this, thank you
I need to be at work, thank you
we need our jobs, thank you
my name is April, thank you
my name is Sequoia, thank you
my name is Celeste, thank you
you laying off mechanics, thank you
that's a disgrace, thank you
that's a death warrant, thank you
those buses can't stop, thank you
those buses don't work, thank you
those buses filthy, thank you
I invite you to come down, thank you
I invite you to ride my bus, thank you
I work from 9 to 7, thank you
what you hearing today, thank you
we hear everyday, thank you
we hear complaints, thank you
we hear it all the time, thank you
old people can't get out, thank you
young people can't get home, thank you
we hear it all the time, thank you
you not respecting, thank you
when I speak to you, thank you
you not respecting, thank you
your face is down, thank you
your mind made up, thank you
you looking down, thank you
I'm talking, thank you
you not listening, thank you
you ain't looking, thank you
this bus company going down, thank you
20 years ago it was something, thank you
20 years ago we be proud, thank you
you give us something to serve, thank you
we serve it, thank you
now we got nothing, thank you
this company going down, thank you
it's on the record, thank you
it's on the record, thank you
the way you do, thank you
I'm voting you out, thank you
you going down, thank you
thank you, thank you, thank you

—Summer Brenner

Originally published in SURVIVAL: A Poets Speak Anthology, 2018

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The World Series continues to be a great distraction: Tampa Bay Rays stun Los Angeles Dodgers in World Series Game 4 on dramatic finish at plate

Six Foods that Help to Reduce Anxiety —Brianna Elliott, RD, Healthline.com

Salmon, Chamomile, Turmeric, Dark Chocolate, Yogurt, Green Tea

Dinner on Election Day night: Baked Salmon, Dark Chocolate Cake, Camomile Tea?

Be well all! Stay Strong!