The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 42, February 28, 2021
"Orthodoxy is my Doxy, Heterodoxy is the other fellow's Doxy.”― Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo
“The fact is we all know that there exists in the world an order different from that in which we pass our days. If we reveal its existence people think that we are crazy.”—Andre Codrescu
“Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.”― Audre Lorde
The world’s oldest known bird just turned 70 – why she’s so special, Kim Studerman Rogers, National Geographic, 2/25/21
KAPA'A, HAWAII She could be any of a million Laysan albatross returning each fall to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, a group of three tiny islands formed from coral reefs in the North Pacific. Here, a thousand miles north of Honolulu, scores of brilliant white seabirds dot the islands’ exposed fields, each sitting atop a single, soda can–size egg. Both males and females sport the same charcoal-smudged eyes and chocolate-brown wings, which can span six and a half feet.
But one bird stands out: Wisdom. Sporting the red ankle band Z333, she is at least 70 this year, the oldest-known wild bird in history.
Beaver Believers: Native Americans promote resurgence of ‘nature’s engineers,’ Lucy Sherriff, The Guardian, 2/23/21
Back in 2018, Washington’s Cowlitz Indian Tribe started on an ambitious project: to reintroduce beavers back into the Gifford Pinchot national forest, a wild region on the slopes of the Cascade mountains, as part of efforts to reclaim indigenous land management practices. The animals had not been in the region since the 1930s, after they were trapped into near-extinction in North America during the 1800s fur trade.
In partnership with the Cascade Forest Conservancy, the tribe has spent the last two years capturing beavers from private lands, where their dams are often dynamited, and relocating them on to tribal land.
The project has been such a success that the tribe was recently awarded a grant to survey beaver habitat, mapping the impact beavers have made on the land, in order to create a relocation model for other communities in the state – and perhaps further afield.
[Ed note: Please click through to read the article below about right-wing donors. It is incredible to see the amount of money spent by so many wealthy individuals, families and through PACS, so many corporations and interest groups. This is how so-called populists are supported – by billionaires.]
The Real Money Behind the Politicians Who Voted to Overturn the Election, Alex Kotch, Exposed (Center for Media and Democracy, 1/28/21
These 10 individuals and families donated nearly $500 million to outside political groups that made independent expenditures supporting at least one of the 147 GOP members of Congress who voted against the 2020 presidential election results or attacking their opponents in their most recent elections. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson $191.4 million; Ken Griffin $59.8 million; Timothy Mellon $50 million; Stephen and Christine Schwarzman: $46 million; Liz and Richard Uihlein: $43.4 million; Jeff Yass $33.3 million; Reyes Family $21.5 million; Ricketts Family $18.1 million; Charles and Helen Schwab: $17.2 million; Bernard and Billi Marcus: $14.7 million.
And then this ready example, a career built on lies and funding from some of these very donors. This is the true corruption of democracy in action:
The making of Madison Cawthorn: How falsehoods helped propel the career of a new pro-Trump star of the far right, Cawthorn has emerged as one of the most visible figures among newly arrived House Republicans, who have promoted baseless assertions and pushed a radicalized ideology that has become a driving force in the GOP, Michael Kranish, Washington Post, 2/27/21
He promptly used his newfound fame to push baseless allegations about voting fraud on Twitter in a video viewed 4 million times, which President Donald Trump retweeted, saying, “Thank you Madison!”
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Where we fail is in our desire for perfection
But it hardly matters
So many fail out of their desire for profit
Even social profit
Who gives a fuck?
Who really gives a fuck?
—Dick Gallup, 1941-2021, “Two Bits Will Get You Four”
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I am signaling you through the flames.
The North Pole is not where it used to be.
Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.
Civilization self-destructs.
Nemesis is knocking at the door.
What are poets for, in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1919-2021, from “Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames]”
It looks like the Batmobile, works on solar energy, and could be the future of cars, Sarah Kaplan and Aaron Steckelberg, Washington Post, 2/25/21
Aptera Motors, a California company whose name comes from the ancient Greek for “wingless,” is rolling out the first mass-produced solar car this year. It’s a three-wheel, ultra-aerodynamic electric vehicle covered in 34 square feet of solar cells. The car is so efficient that, on a clear day, those cells alone could provide enough energy to drive about 40 miles — more than twice the distance of the average American’s commute.
The Most Likely Timeline for Life to Return to Normal: An uncertain spring, an amazing summer, a cautious fall and winter, and then, finally, relief, Joe Pinster, The Atlantic, 2/22/21
SUMMER 2021
Whatever happens in the spring, the summer should be a sublime departure from what Americans have lived through so far. As my colleague James Hamblin wrote last week, “In most of the U.S., the summer could feel … ‘normal,’” even “revelatory.”
“Barring some variant that is just really crazy, I expect the summer to be a lot like the summer of 2019,” Andrew Noymer, a public-health professor at UC Irvine, told me. Based on the drop-off in cases and hospitalizations over the past few weeks, he thinks life could even be close to normal as soon as sometime in May.
Other experts I consulted were slightly less optimistic, but they generally agreed that at some point between June and September, the combination of widespread vaccinations and warmer weather would likely make many activities much safer, including having friends and family over indoors, taking public transit, being in a workplace, dining inside restaurants, and traveling domestically (whether for work, visiting loved ones, or a vacation).
“Power Companies Get Exactly What They Want”: How Texas Repeatedly Failed to Protect Its Power Grid Against Extreme Weather. Texas regulators and lawmakers knew about the grid’s vulnerabilities for years, but time and again they furthered the interests of large electricity providers, Jeremy Schwartz, Kiah Collier and Vianna Davila, ProPublica, 2/22/21
As millions of Texans endured days without power and water, experts and news organizations pointed to unheeded warnings in a federal report that examined the 2011 winter storm and offered recommendations for preventing future problems. The report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation concluded, among other things, that power companies and natural gas producers hadn’t properly readied their facilities for cold weather, including failing to install extra insulation, wind breaks and heaters.
Another federal report released three years later made similar recommendations with few results. Lawmakers also failed to pass measures over the past two decades that would have required the operator of the state’s main power grid to ensure adequate reserves to shield against blackouts, provided better representation for residential and small commercial consumers on the board that oversees that agency and allowed the state’s top emergency-planning agency to make sure power plants were adequately “hardened” against disaster.
Loss of Sockeye Diversity Threatens Skeena Salmon, Study Finds, Local and Indigenous fisheries are best positioned to manage fish at the population level, Amanda Follett Hosgood, TheTyee.ca, 2/22/21
There’s an urgent need to increase the biodiversity of sockeye salmon stocks in the Skeena watershed if they are to adapt to challenges like climate change, according to a study published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
The Skeena River, Canada’s second-largest salmon-producing watershed, enters the Pacific just south of Prince Rupert. Its tributaries include major salmon-bearing watersheds like the Bulkley, Babine and Kispiox, which support commercial, Indigenous and sport fisheries.
Yet researchers, drawing on 100-year-old fish DNA, say some unique sockeye populations that return to their home tributaries generation after generation to spawn, are at risk of dying out. This could result in a loss of unique characteristics, such as body size and how long they spend in the ocean.
The lack of diversity puts sockeye at a disadvantage when it comes to adapting to their environment, said lead author and Simon Fraser University PhD candidate Michael Price.
What a 1900s Wildlife Survey Reveals About Climate Change: A century ago, a biologist counted California's desert animals. Now researchers are retracing his steps—and the results are surprising, Jim Morrison, Wired, 2/23/21
WHEN RESEARCHERS FOLLOWING in the boots of biologist Joseph Grinnell, who a century ago created a pioneering survey of California wildlife, began sampling birds and small mammals in the Mojave Desert, they expected the harsh conditions would magnify population changes driven by the climate crisis.
"We knew when we were going to the desert that life was on the edge there," says Steven R. Beissinger, a professor of ecology and conservation biology at UC Berkeley who has been part of what's called the Grinnell Resurvey Project since it began 17 years ago. The goal is to revisit the same areas Grinnell and his students observed between 1904 and 1940, comparing new data with old. "If there was going to be any place where we would see these physical impacts, it should be there," he says.
There were, at least among birds. A three-year desert survey, completed in 2018 by the Berkeley team, revealed a stunning community collapse. Thirty-nine of 135 species counted by Grinnell were less common and less widespread. The 61 sites sampled lost, on average, 43 percent of the species that were there a century ago. Only one species, the common raven, increased. The reason? Like many deserts, the Mojave is getting hotter and drier, warming by about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit and experiencing rainfall declines of 20 percent in some areas over the last century. "That was a shock," Beissinger says.
So he figured if climate change had altered the desert ecosystem by heating and drying, they’d see the same collapse among mammals when the results of that survey, which took longer to analyze, were complete.
They didn't. Rather than suffer a similar collapse, they wrote earlier this month in Science, small mammals in the Mojave proved resilient, sheltering underground during the hot day and foraging above ground during the cooler nights. Overall, the researchers sampled 34 small mammal species—kangaroo rats, kangaroo mice, pocket mice, wood rats, cactus mice, ground squirrels, and grasshopper mice, among them—at 90 sites in and around Death Valley National Park, Joshua Tree National Park, and the Mojave National Preserve. What they found were numbers similar to those in the Grinnell survey.
Scientists see stronger evidence of slowing Atlantic Ocean circulation, an ‘Achilles’ heel’ of the climate: The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, a system of currents, is weaker than it has been in 1,000 years, Chris Mooney and Andrew Freedman, Washington Post, 2/25/21
A growing body of evidence suggests that a massive change is underway in the sensitive circulation system of the Atlantic Ocean, a group of scientists said Thursday.
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), a system of currents that includes the Florida Current and the Gulf Stream, is now “in its weakest state in over a millennium,” these experts say. This has implications for everything from the climate of Europe to the rates of sea-level rise along the U.S. East Coast.
Although evidence of the system’s weakening has been published before, the new research cites 11 sources of “proxy” evidence of the circulation’s strength, including clues hidden in seafloor mud as well as patterns of ocean temperatures. The enormous flow has been directly measured only since 2004, too short a period to definitively establish a trend, which makes these indirect measures critical for understanding its behavior.
New machine learning theory raises questions about nature of science, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, phys.org, 2/12/21
A novel computer algorithm, or set of rules, that accurately predicts the orbits of planets in the solar system could be adapted to better predict and control the behavior of the plasma that fuels fusion facilities designed to harvest on Earth the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars.
The algorithm, devised by a scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), applies machine learning, the form of artificial intelligence (AI) that learns from experience, to develop the predictions. "Usually in physics, you make observations, create a theory based on those observations, and then use that theory to predict new observations," said PPPL physicist Hong Qin, author of a paper detailing the concept in Scientific Reports. "What I'm doing is replacing this process with a type of black box that can produce accurate predictions without using a traditional theory or law."
There’s a new kind of pollution to be worried about: nanomaterials, Carbon nanotubes and other microscopic particles are increasingly part of consumer goods. They’re also being found in organisms up and down the food chain, Kristin Toussaint, Fast Company, 2/12/21
Nanotechnology is spurring a new industrial revolution. The process of engineering materials on an incredibly small scale—a human hair is about 80,000 nanometers wide—has led to advancements in everything from electronics to paint to cosmetics to clothes. But their small size also poses a threat as a new type of pollution: nanomaterials can easily end up in the environment, get into living organisms, and make their way through the food chain, new research shows.
A third of all food in the U.S. gets wasted. Fixing that could help fight climate change. The carbon footprint of food waste is greater than that of the airline industry, Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post, 2/25/21
When it comes time to prepare a meal, “I don’t cook what I’m in the mood for,” Miller-Davis said. “I open my refrigerator, and I assess what needs to be cooked.”
Her upcoming cookbook, What’s for Dinner, offers tips for making use of whatever’s available. Carrot tops can be turned into pesto. Wilting greens can be thrown into soup. Fruit on its last legs can be chopped and frozen to later become a smoothie.
If there’s absolutely no way to rescue an item (for example, my slimy spinach), composting can limit the environmental impact of tossing it. When food rots in a landfill, it produces huge amounts of methane — a greenhouse gas at least 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide. But in compost bins, microbes convert that organic matter into nutrient-rich soil, keeping the carbon out of the atmosphere and producing valuable fertilizer. Project Drawdown, a nonprofit researching the best ways to reduce planet-warming emissions, reports that increasing composting around the globe could generate carbon savings equivalent to taking roughly 15 million passenger vehicles off the road for 30 years.
Native American Food Sovereignty: An Interview with Filmmaker Sanjay Rawal, Arty Mangan, Bioneers.org, 2/26/21
The film looks at the effects of colonization and genocide on the Native American food system. Being in the form of visual media rather than a book, I’m limited by the access I have to visual media. I couldn’t look at East Coast tribes that experienced genocide in the 1860s and 1870s before there were photographs. So, I looked at tribal nations west of the Mississippi. By the time the US government began moving west of the Mississippi, it had consolidated its military might and focused on Native American extermination to a degree that it hadn’t before as an institution. There were probably no more heavily affected areas, as a whole, than the plains and the Apacheria [the area inhabited by Apache people] in the Southwest.
The Brain’s ‘background noise’ May be Meaningful After All, By digging out signals hidden within the brain’s electrical chatter, scientists are getting new insights into sleep, aging, and more, Elizabeth Landau, Wired, 2/21/21
AT A SLEEP research symposium in January 2020, Janna Lendner presented findings that hint at a way to look at people’s brain activity for signs of the boundary between wakefulness and unconsciousness. For patients who are comatose or under anesthesia, it can be all-important that physicians make that distinction correctly. Doing so is trickier than it might sound, however, because when someone is in the dreaming state of rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, their brain produces the same familiar, smoothly oscillating brain waves as when they are awake.
Lendner argued, though, that the answer isn’t in the regular brain waves, but rather in an aspect of neural activity that scientists might normally ignore: the erratic background noise.
Some researchers seemed incredulous. “They said, ‘So, you’re telling me that there’s, like, information in the noise?’” said Lendner, an anesthesiology resident at the University Medical Center in Tübingen, Germany, who recently completed a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley. “I said, ‘Yes. Someone’s noise is another one’s signal.’”
Lendner is one of a growing number of neuroscientists energized by the idea that noise in the brain’s electrical activity could hold new clues to its inner workings. What was once seen as the neurological equivalent of annoying television static may have profound implications for how scientists study the brain.
Ezra Klein Interviews Zeynep Tufekci about Systems Thinking, New York Times, 2/2/21
…before Tufekci was being prescient about coronavirus, I knew her because she was prescient about disinformation online, about the way social media was changing political organizing, about the way the YouTube algorithm was radicalizing, about the rising threat of authoritarianism in America. She is unusual in being able to say important, ahead-of-the-curve things in a lot of different areas and spheres.
Zeynep Tufekci on Substack: I’m going to experiment with a thread here that’s open to everyone—not just to subscribers—to discuss the full article which can be found here (and the open thread itself for the discussion can be found here).
Five key fallacies and pitfalls have affected public-health messaging, as well as media coverage, and have played an outsize role in derailing an effective pandemic response. These problems were deepened by the ways that we—the public—developed to cope with a dreadful situation under great uncertainty. And now, even as vaccines offer brilliant hope, and even though, at least in the United States, we no longer have to deal with the problem of a misinformer in chief, some officials and media outlets are repeating many of the same mistakes in handling the vaccine rollout.
The pandemic has given us an unwelcome societal stress test, revealing the cracks and weaknesses in our institutions and our systems. Some of these are common to many contemporary problems, including political dysfunction and the way our public sphere operates. Others are more particular, though not exclusive, to the current challenge—including a gap between how academic research operates and how the public understands that research, and the ways in which the psychology of coping with the pandemic have distorted our response to it.
Recognizing all these dynamics is important, not only for seeing us through this pandemic—yes, it is going to end—but also to understand how our society functions, and how it fails. We need to start shoring up our defenses, not just against future pandemics but against all the myriad challenges we face—political, environmental, societal, and technological. None of these problems is impossible to remedy, but first we have to acknowledge them and start working to fix them—and we’re running out of time.
Erik Prince and the Failed Plot to Arm a CIA-Asset-Turned-Warlord in Libya, Matthew Cole, The Intercept, 2/26/21
In 2019, Erik Prince, the founder of the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater and a prominent Donald Trump supporter, aided a plot to move U.S.-made attack helicopters, weapons, and other military equipment from Jordan to a renegade commander fighting for control of war-torn Libya. A team of mercenaries planned to use the aircraft to help the commander, Khalifa Hifter, a U.S. citizen and former CIA asset, defeat Libya’s U.N.-recognized and U.S.-backed government. While the U.N. has alleged that Prince helped facilitate the mercenary effort, sources with knowledge of the chain of events, as well as documents obtained by The Intercept, reveal new details about the scheme as well as Prince’s years long campaign to support Hifter in his bid to take power in Libya.
[Ed note: Erik Prince is the brother of the notorious Betsy DeVos]
RATATATAT – Quick Hits
Chemicals in plastics damage babies' brains and must be banned immediately, expert group says, Sandee LaMotte, CNN, 2/20/21
On U.S. East Coast, Has Offshore Wind’s Moment Finally Arrived?After years of false starts, offshore wind is poised to take off along the East Coast. Commitments by states to purchase renewable power, support from the Biden administration, and billions in, Jon Hurdle, Yale Environment 360, 2/24/21
When the Grid Goes Down, Can a Fleet of Batteries Replace It?In a power crisis, maybe the solution is a network of smaller energy sources distributed across multiple places—like your garage, Gregory Barber, Wired, 2/24/21
Missteps in L.A.’s Pandemic Response Left Disadvantaged Communities Behind: New collaborations with community organizations may produce innovative solutions that could make the pandemic recovery more equitable, Angelika Albaladejo, Capital & Main, 2/25/21
McKinsey suffers from collective self-delusion, The smuggest guys in the room, Schumpeter, The Economist, 2/26/21
Atlanta creates the nation's largest free food forest with hopes of addressing food insecurity, Carly Ryan, CNN, 2/22/21
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today
—Marvin Gaye, What’s Goin’ On, 1971
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Is one mind put into another
in us unknown to ourselves
by going about among trees
and fields in moonlight or in
a garden to ease distance to
fetch home spiritual things
—Susan Howe, from “That This”
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Some of you might be interested in this excellent new Kickstarter project from Steve Kroeter’s Designers and Books: The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn: A Facsimile. It’s an exact copy of the architect's long-unavailable 60-year-old book accompanied by a new, illustrated Reader’s Guide.
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A strong song tows
us, long earsick.
Blind, we follow
rain slant, spray flick
to fields we do not know.
Night, float us.
Offshore wind, shout,
ask the sea
what’s lost, what’s left,
what horn sunk,
what crown adrift.
Where we are who knows
of kings who sup
while day fails? Who,
swinging his axe
to fell kings, guesses
where we go?
—Basil Bunting, the Coda to Briggflats, 1965
(I recommend listening to Bunting read from Briggflats, it is one of the great readings of our time by an incredible poet. His biography tells quite the story too: A Strong Song Tows Us by Richard Burton)
And for those of you who enjoy podcasts, please check out my latest episode at Writerscast.com. I talked to Sydney Ladensohn Stern about her dual biography, The Brothers Mankiewicz – Herman and Joe, two titans of American film. If you have seen the film Mank, you know only part of the Mankiewicz story. If you’ve seen Citizen Kane or All About Eve, the brothers have affected your life already.
And a bit more self-promotion for which I hope to be forgiven – we’ve added more terrific book and writing related podcasts to the Livewriters.com collection, it’s still the best way to find a broad selection of literary podcasts all in one place.
Thanks for reading The Weird Times. I hope this diverse collection of news, links, writing and art will stimulate thought, attention and action during this time of disruptive change. If you like this newsletter, feel free to share it.
Stay well, stay strong, be well. And do keep in touch.