The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 39, February 6, 2021
“The orphic explanation of the Earth is the poet’s only duty.” —Stéphane Mallarmé
“...the most serious thing, and the strangest, is that we are afraid to the point of panic, not so much of seeing ourselves as of being seen by ourselves. This is our root absurdity. What is behind this great fear?” —René Daumal
I’m trying to be more positive, as much as that is possible in recording these weird times. Things are definitely still weird, and the sheer unendingness of what we are experiencing now is sometimes overwhelming, but this issue contains a number of stories that can’t help but provide some welcome relief from the utter grimness that threatens to overtake us.
Join the Great Backyard Birdcount February 12-15! The Great Backyard Bird Count uses eBird, one of the world’s largest nature databases. It stores more than 100 million bird sightings contributed each year and is used by professionals for science and conservation. Contribute to eBird and become a citizen scientist.
If you are NEW to the Great Backyard Bird Count and have a smartphone, you can use the Merlin Bird ID app to participate.
'One of a kind': calls to protect Alabama's 60,000-year-old underwater forest, Paolo Rosa-Aquino, The Guardian, 1/20/21
When divers jump into a particular stretch of water off the coast of Alabama, they travel back to a time before humans arrived in the new world.
Submerged below the waters are the remains of a cypress tree forest that grew 60,000 years ago, but was inundated by the Gulf of Mexico and preserved from decomposition beneath sediment. Nothing like Alabama’s underwater forest, in terms of age or scale, has ever been found.
Now efforts are underway to protect the expanse of tree stumps from exploitation by designating the site a marine sanctuary – some firms have sought to salvage the wood for commercial use – and to see if the underwater forest harbors new compounds for medicine.
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Biodiversity report urges nations to consider nature an economic asset, Adam Vaughan, New Scientist, 2/2/21
A major report on the economics of biodiversity urges governments to look beyond traditional measures of goods and services produced in order to address the “massive deterioration” of the natural world over the past 70 years.
The Dasgupta Review, commissioned by the UK Treasury and likened to the influential 2006 Stern review on climate change, paints a dire picture of biodiversity loss. It also warns that our destruction of nature in turn threatens economies, by negatively affecting essentials such as clean water and medicines.
However, Partha Dasgupta at the University of Cambridge, who led the review, says the situation can be turned around by adopting new measures of success other than gross domestic product, such as China’s use of the gross ecosystem product, which accounts for the value of natural ecosystems as well as artificial natural resources, such as farmland or urban green land.
Food production must be “fundamentally restructured” to reduce our impact on nature, says Dasgupta, not just with technology – for example, the use of genetically modified crops to improve yields – but by changing behaviour, such as wasting less food. He highlights the benefits of shifting diets away from meat, but stops shy of advocating for people to eat less meat.
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Truth Decay: A Threat to Policymaking and Democracy, Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich, Rand Research Brief
The line between fact and fiction in American public life is becoming blurred. RAND has begun studying the causes and consequences of this "Truth Decay" phenomenon and how it affects democracy and political and civil discourse in the United States. Where basic facts and well-supported analyses of these facts were once generally accepted — such as the benefit of using vaccines to protect health — disagreement about even objective facts and well-supported analyses has swelled in recent years. In addition, a growing number of Americans view the U.S. government, media, and academia with new skepticism. These developments drive wedges between policymakers and neighbors alike. This research brief describes RAND’s findings about the causes and consequences of Truth Decay and offers a research agenda for addressing the challenges this phenomenon creates, with the intent of improving policymaking and political discourse. Truth Decay presents a vital threat to American democracy, and RAND invites other researchers, policymakers, journalists, and educators to join in responding to that threat.
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Danish scientists see tough times ahead as they watch more contagious COVID-19 virus surge, Kai Kupferschmidt, Science, 2/3/21
On its face, the curve of COVID-19 infections in Denmark looks reassuring enough. A nationwide lockdown has led numbers to plummet from more than 3000 daily cases in mid-December 2020 to just a few hundred now. But don’t be fooled. “Sure, the numbers look nice,” says Camilla Holten Møller of the Statens Serum Institute, who heads a group of experts modeling the epidemic. “But if we look at our models, this is the calm before the storm.”
That’s because the graph really reflects two epidemics: one, shrinking fast, that’s caused by older variants of SARS-CoV-2, and a smaller, slowly growing outbreak of B.1.1.7, the variant first recognized in England and now driving a big third wave of the pandemic there. If B.1.1.7 keeps spreading at the same pace in Denmark, it will become the dominant variant later this month and cause the overall number of cases to rise again, despite the lockdown, Holten Møller says. “It is a complete game changer.”
The same is likely happening in many countries without being noticed. But a massive virus-sequencing effort has allowed Denmark, a country of 5.8 million, to track the rise of the new COVID-19 variant more closely than any other country. “All eyes are on Denmark right now,” says Kristian Andersen, an infectious diseases researcher at Scripps Research who is advising the Danish government.
Scientists have taught spinach to send emails and it could warn us about climate change, Marthe de Ferrer, Euronews, 2/2/21
It may sound like something out of a futuristic science fiction film, but scientists have managed to engineer spinach plants which are capable of sending emails.
Through nanotechnology, engineers at MIT in the US have transformed spinach into sensors capable of detecting explosive materials. These plants are then able to wirelessly relay this information back to the scientists.
When the spinach roots detect the presence of nitroaromatics in groundwater, a compound often found in explosives like landmines, the carbon nanotubes within the plant leaves emit a signal. This signal is then read by an infrared camera, sending an email alert to the scientists.
This experiment is part of a wider field of research which involves engineering electronic components and systems into plants. The technology is known as “plant nanobionics”, and is effectively the process of giving plants new abilities.
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Therapy for the End of the World:Anxiety over the climate crisis is spreading like wildfire. Psychologists are just starting to figure out how to help, Britt Wray, The Walrus, 2/3/21
“I’ve been seeing teens who [felt] suicidal because the pain and distress . . . from the coronavirus is finally starting to mirror how they’ve been feeling about climate change for a long time, and they’re wondering, Why on earth can’t people recognize the scale of the threat in the longer term?” says Caroline Hickman, a British clinical psychotherapist.
Hickman is part of a growing movement of “climate-aware” psycho-therapists, who help people cope with complex emotions that stem from awareness of environmental crises. It can be difficult to isolate climate change as a reason for seeking therapy, so no one can say precisely how many therapists are working with people on climate-related issues. But those specializing in eco-anxiety and its companion emotions are starting to get professionally organized in groups like the Climate Psychology Alliances of the United Kingdom and North America, which between them have about 2,000 mental health care practitioners on their mailing lists.
How a Young Activist is Helping Pope Francis Battle Climate Change, David Owen, New Yorker, 2/1/21
The role of the cartographer, according to Molly Burhans, is not just data analytics. “It’s also storytelling.”
Burhans concluded that the Church had the means to address climate issues directly, through better land management, and that it was also capable of protecting populations that were especially vulnerable to the consequences of global warming. Some researchers have estimated that drought, rising sea levels, and other climate-related disasters will drive two hundred million people from their homes by 2050; many of those people live in places—including some parts of Central Africa, the Amazon Basin, and Asia—where the Church has more leverage than any government. “There is no way that we will address the climate crisis or biodiversity loss in any sort of timely manner if the Catholic Church does not engage, especially with its own lands and property,” Burhans said. “At the end of the day, I’m more subordinate to my ecclesiastical authority than I am to my government authority. You can see that kind of sentiment even in non-Catholics, like Martin Luther King, Jr.—sometimes you have to default to a greater good.” What if desecration of the environment were a mortal sin? Could faith accomplish what science and politics have not?
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Inevitable Planetary Doom Has Been Exaggerated: Hope for the future is a reasonable and necessary prerequisite for action, Emma Marris, The Atlantic, 2/1/21
So fighting for racial or economic justice, or against voter suppression, still can mean fighting for the environment. As these links are becoming better understood, the environmental movement is finally working with its natural allies to, for example, fight fossil fuels while promoting investment in Black, Indigenous, brown, and working-class communities.
There will be more crises, more setbacks. But there is no “too late.” In the longer term, we know what we need to do to stop climate change, save species, and make sure everyone breathes clean air and drinks clean water. Not everything can be saved. But 2021 can be better than 2020, and 2031 can be much, much better than 2021, if we demand it. (Ed. note: emphasis added)
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One of my oldest friends, Ed Morrison, is also one of the smartest. He recently posted on Linked In:
For so many years, our economic thinking has run backward. We have thought that reducing tax burdens at the top of the pyramid will stimulate growth at the bottom (supply-side economics). Or, prosperity involves a "free market" unfettered by any concerns other than profit and shareholder value (neoclassical economics).
We have seen where this thinking gets us: a global economy that has chewed up the earth's biosphere and income inequality so severe that our democratic institutions are eroding.
And he has some better answers too. Spend some time at Ed’s website, The Agile Strategy to learn more about his thinking and ideas. Brilliant. Practical. Applicable.
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From one of my favorite newsletters, Scrap Facts, by Katherine Ellen Foley:
The Covid-19 spike protein isn’t a “spike” so much as its a massive amino acid glob.
Found while reporting: Will the Covid-19 vaccine work on the new variants?
I’ve written in the past about how the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein works like a key to the ACE2 receptor in our cells. It’s a good analogy! But perhaps misleading in the kind of shape we’re working with.
The spike proteins on the SARS-CoV-2 virus actually line the sphere. They’re a mix of some ~1,300 amino acids (think LEGO bricks for proteins), with some sugar molecules on there. They’re also not stagnant, and can shape-shift to be either stickier on the surface of our cells, or sneakier getting into our cells into our cells. Because the spike protein has such an integral role in infection, all the vaccines available so far target it.
A lot of the mutations you’ve probably heard about with SARS-CoV-2 represent slight changes to the spike protein. Variant B.1.1.7, for example, has swapped out a dozen or so amino acids on the protein for another on spike proteins, which happen to provide an extra opportunity for the virus to infect our own cells. This makes it about 50% more infectious.
While scientists are studying whether these mutations can help the virus evade antibodies from a vaccine (an idea which sounds terrifying) it’s important to remember just how big spike proteins are: The fact that they’re made up of over 1,000 amino acids means that swapping a few out here and there won’t matter too much in the long run.
Even some of the vaccine trails that have shown less efficacy against some mutations, some priming to our immune system by a vaccine is better than none. Our immune system learns over time, and adapts to new circumstances (much like we do, dear reader). If the immune response a vaccine generates aren’t a perfect defense to a new spike protein, it’ll change.
That change in response may take some time—which is why it’s still as important as ever to try not to get sick, as much as possible. But all hope is not yet lost.
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The Power of Community: How Citizens Can Be the Change They Want to See in the World, Bioneers, 2/2/21
“It is very important to recognize that equity isn’t just the recognition of racial or cultural divides, but also thinking about it in terms of how we can develop sustainable long-term relationships across a plethora of different issues.” —Lil Milagro Henriquez
In 2017, Lil Milagro Henriquez founded the Mycelium Youth Network, an organization that prepares youth of color in the East Bay Area for climate change. Located on unceded xučyun territory belonging to the Ohlone Nation, the Mycelium Youth Network fosters localized community resilience by providing S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering Arts and Math) and Indigenous educational programming. Henriquez represents a growing movement of youth pushing for a transformational overhaul of how we fundamentally relate to each other and to the natural world.
Henriquez’s youth-centered approach redefines equity by challenging organizers to rethink how they enact community action.
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Opinion: GameStop signals a new, destabilizing collision between social media and the real world, Sinan Aral, Washington Post, 1/31/21
The past week’s events exposed several potential sources of economic instability. If investment decisions are completely unmoored from the economic realities of the companies involved, the potential for destructive volatility rises. If the social media crowd’s opinion alone drives market value, the market goes where the herd takes it, without the constraints of economic reality.
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Our responsibility and opportunity – moving beyond fossil fuels, Jared Duval, VTDigger, 1/31/21
What we need most is a policy and regulatory framework that requires pollution reductions from our transportation and heating sectors, with responsibilities for the entities that import and sell those fossil fuels. Otherwise, we’ll be doing little more than the equivalent of squirting a water pistol on a house fire.
(I interviewed Jared for my podcast series at Writerscast about his insightful book Next Generation Democracy way back in 2010)
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Want Environmental Justice? Look to Energy Efficiency, Paula Glover, Politico, 2/1/21
According to federal research, households earning less than twice the federal poverty level — roughly less than $50,000 for a family of four — spend an average of 16 percent of their income on energy costs. Households earning above $100,000 spend just 3.5 percent. Imagine if simply paying your monthly energy bill wiped out more than 15 percent of your income. While this is a particularly acute problem for Black and brown communities, it is also a widespread challenge for white and rural communities.
There is no silver bullet for reducing this burden, but energy efficiency is a grossly undervalued solution, particularly as we work simultaneously to tackle the climate crisis in way that promotes environmental justice. In fact, given energy efficiency’s ability to reduce costs, cut pollution and create jobs, I would argue that the conversation so many of us are having about environmental justice and climate policy — and that the White House put in the headlines last week — should start with energy efficiency.
Ratatatat (quick hits):
Curing the ‘colonial hangover’: how Yukon First Nations became trailblazers of Indigenous governance, Julien Gignac, The Narwhal, 1/30/21
What Would a 21st-Century Federal Writers Project Look Like? Jason Boog, Full Stop, 2/1/21
Kristal and her students are fighting to eradicate ocean plastic, Daniel South, BBC News, 1/28/21
How to redesign COVID vaccines so they protect against variants, Lineages that can evade immunity are spurring vaccine makers to explore ways to redesign their shots, Ewen Callaway and Heidi Ledford, Nature, 1/29/21
Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts, Emily Kubin, Curtis Puryear, Chelsea Schlein, Curtis Gray, to appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2/9/21
Oregon first state to decriminalize possession of drugs, Andrew Selsky, LA Times, 2/1/21
So you got the vaccine. Can you still infect people? Pfizer is trying to find out. For now, even if you’ve had covid-19 or been given the shot, it's smart to keep your mask on, Antonio Regolado, MIT Technology Review, 2/1/21
Wildfire smoke may carry 'mind-bending' amounts of fungi and bacteria, scientists say, Joseph Cerna, LA Times, 2/1/21
California’s Rainy Season Now Starts a Month Later Than It Used To, E360 Digest, 2/4/21
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Why You Should Take Any Vaccine, Zeynep Tufekci, from her newsletter, 2/4/21
“Based on the existing data, and to the best of my understanding of having read every paper, authorization application and preprint on the efficacy of these vaccines, I can, without a hesitation, say that of the ones I know are being considered in various places in the US, UK and Europe—Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, J&J, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Novavax—I would be happy with receiving *any* of them. I would easily recommend *any* of them to anyone I know, whatever they were offered.”
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Just posted, a new interview at Writerscast.com in my Publishing Talks series with publishing innovator Arthur Attwell from Capetown, South Africa. Aside from being involved in a number of interesting digital publishing projects, Arthur and colleagues have created an extraordinary project called Book Dash, a brilliant endeavor that has enabled the creation and distribution of over one million books to kids in Africa. Their goal is to enable children to own 100 books or more (each) by the time they are five years old. It’s an inspiring effort.
And don’t forget to visit the constantly updated podcast site, LiveWriters.com — if you can stand reading yet another newsletter, and are interested in books or podcasts or both, please subscribe to our bi-weekly roundup of podcasting news.
“My magic now is stronger than any other magic. And if it is a mere magic, I don’t care. Later, give me Reality. I’ll take all the reality Eros or Fairy Tale can dish out. You can land on me again. You can throw me back. Say that I’m meant to go to Hell. I wouldn’t drag Jess to Hell for company; but I’m not going to make a Hell here and now in order to practice being in Hell. This all has all along been my reaction to Good and Evil. If there’s a war between them, tell me that Evil will conquer. I don’t take Good because what I understand is Good is going to win. As a matter of fact, I choose Good over Evil because only if I practice it will it exist. Its existence is more important than its winning.” —Robert Duncan, interviewed by Robert Peters and Paul Trachtenberg, May 29, 1976, published in the Chicago Review.
There is just no percentage in remembering the past
It's time you learned to live again and love at last
Come with me leave your yesterday your yesterday behind
And take a giant step outside your mind
—Taj Mahal, Take a Giant Step Outside Your Mind
Celebrating Black Poetry with E. Ethelbert Miller, at Ball State University.
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Thank you all for reading The Weird Times. Your comments and responses are welcome and always appreciated. Be well all — David