The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 149, March 19, 2023 (V3 #44)
“You are born alone. You die alone. The value of the space in between is trust and love.”—Louise Bourgeois
Death also sees, though darkly,
And I must trust then as now
Only another kind of prism
Through which I may not put my hands to touch.
—from “Prisms,” Laura Riding Jackson
Politics
Donald Trump: innocent until proven guilty, Steve Schmidt, The Warning, 3/19/23: “One of America’s two major political parties has detached itself from core tenants of liberalism and democracy. The abandonment of them by the only political party America has left that believes in America will be a disaster as great as Trump’s presidency — and then some. It would mean that we have lost the country to Donald Trump, the most vile of men.”
Have You Noticed America Is Looking Like a Third World Nation? America has an entirely new type of slum we haven’t seen here since the 1930s, the product of 42 years of the Reagan Revolution. We call them “tent cities” & roadsides lined with old RVs and cars…Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 3/14/23
21 South Carolina GOP Lawmakers Propose Death Penalty for Women Who Have Abortions: It’s not just a lone extremist: The bill has 21 co-sponsors in the state’s House of Representatives, Tessa Stuart, Rolling Stone, 3/13/23
A radical solution to make US affordable housing healthy and community-driven: “The way we as a nation approach affordable housing should begin with centering the people in the homes,” Nsilo Berry, Environmental Health News,3/15/23
Why SVB and Signature Bank failed so fast – and the US banking crisis isn’t over yet, Vidhura S. Tennekoon, The Conversation, 3/13/23: “As an economist who has expertise in banking, I believe it boils down to two other big risks every lender faces: interest rate risk and liquidity risk.”
Regulatory Failure 101: What the Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank Reveals: It’s an all-too-familiar cycle: First comes the boom, then the breathtakingly speedy bust, and then the bailout. Now we’re in the moment where everyone wonders where the financial regulators were, Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica, 3/17/23
Elizabeth Warren’s Moment (Again): Nobody understands or explains the corruption of the financial system better than the Massachusetts senator, Robert Kuttner, American Prospect, 3/15/23
Altman: Biden Is Effectively Nationalizing The Deposit Base Of The Entire U.S. Financial System, Tim Hains, Real Clear Politics, 3/15/23: “When you guarantee the entire deposit base, you have put the federal government and the taxpayer in a much different place in terms of protection than we were in a week ago.”
Banking crises, states of exception & the disappointment of sovereignty - a roundup of last week, Adam Tooze, Chartbook, 3/19/23: “What one is left with is the impression of a financial system that is in the limit highly dependent either on emergency action by public bodies, or concerted action by big capitalists interests, that may or may not be coordinated, overtly or tacitly, by the authorities, a coordination facilitated by the fact that everyone knows everyone else.”
Now that Hate has Become the GOP's Main Political Weapon, What Can Americans Do?Now is the time for Republicans to show the courage of Mandy Connell and loudly and publicly leave their party. As Germans learned by the late 1930s, if they don’t act now it may soon be too late...Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 3/15/23
Could election denialism in a feuding Arizona county upend US democracy? Republicans in Cochise county who undermined midterm election gain control in critical swing state for 2024, Rachel Leingang, The Guardian, 3/16/23
The Four Quadrants of American Politics: Why Congress doesn’t work, Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic, 3/17/23: “The widening chasm between the characteristics of the districts held by each party has left the House not only closely divided, but also deeply divided.”
The Wokeness series: All the posts in one handy list, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 3/17/23: “Instead of wielding the word “wokeness” as a culture-war weapon, I’d rather think about where it came from, why it emerged when it did, and where it’s taking our country.”
Why it’s hard for the US to cut or even control Medicare spending, Dennis W. Jansen, Andrew Rettenmaier, The Conversation, 3/16/23: “Our elected representatives cannot avoid making hard decisions that involve increasing taxes, reducing benefits or both.”
Social Security needs fixing. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be painful, Editorial Board, Washington Post, 3/16/23: “Those costs can and should be borne primarily by those with the means to do so, rather than by lower-income people, whose benefits can and should be protected.”
A Regional Reign of Terror: Most Americans now grasp that violence was essential to the functioning of slavery, but a new book excavates the lesser known brutality of everyday Black life in the Jim Crow South, Eric Foner, NY Review of Books, 4/6/2023 issue. Book: By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow's Legal Executioners, by Margaret Burnham
The tragedy at Mỹ Lai: an American shame, Steve Schmidt, The Warning, 3/15/23: “It is my deepest hope that I will live to see an American president come to Mỹ Lai, and apologize.”
of course not cotton lovely clouds drifting to no lazy music around the very soft blue of the sky as who should say an Oldenburg typewriter floating slowly as if it were October not August nope not you either clouds
—from “Ghost Snow 2 (Unwinding),” Tenney Nathanson
Books & Culture
Margaret Atwood: ‘It would be fun to talk to Simone de Beauvoir:’ The author on being banned in Virginia, communicating with dead writers and her new short story collection, the first since the death of her partner, Lisa O’Kelly, The Guardian, 3/11/23
The Novelist Whose Inventions Went Too Far: After the Afro-Cuban writer H. G. Carrillo died, his husband learned that almost everything the writer had shared about his life was made up—including his Cuban identity, D.T. Max, New Yorker, 3/13/23
Nicholas Humphrey’s Beautiful Theory of Mind: In his new book, Sentience, a neuropsychologist argues that consciousness evolved to make us feel that life is worth living, Nick Romeo, New Yorker, 3/15/23
Book Sanctuary Cities Like Chicago Are a Response to Book Bans, Censorship: As book bans pass across the country, some cities and libraries are declaring themselves “book sanctuaries,” Nandita Raghuram, Teen Vogue, 3/16/23. Ed. note: This should not be necessary in America in 2023.
How Superman Became a Christ-Like Figure in American Culture: on the Judeo-Christian Underpinnings of America’s Favorite Superhero, Roy Schwartz, LitHub, 3/6/23 “By and large, [Superman’s] transformation into a Christ figure has taken place on screen.”
Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself
But I know you’re headed somewhere else
And all the secrets that you keep will be, the things I’ll never know
Doesn’t matter either way, I’ll still miss you when you go
—from “Gonna Miss You When You’re Gone,” Patty Griffin
Science & Environment
A Run on the Planet: There's more ways than one for a bank to fail, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 3/13/23: “They are financing the single most dangerous experiment in the history of our species. Cash in those banks equals carbon in the air. (To see exactly how much carbon, you can run your own banking life through this nifty new calculator from Bank FWD).”
Supreme Court Case Could Reshape Indigenous Water Rights in the Southwest: After 50 years, the government hasn’t developed water infrastructure owed to a Navajo Nation farm. Now the Supreme Court is set to weigh in on the government’s water obligations to tribes, Virginia Gewin, Civil Eats, 3/15/23
Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ found in toilet paper around the world: Research finds waste flushed down toilets and sent to sewage plants probably responsible for significant source of water pollution, Tom Perkins, The Guardian, 3/13/23
The Toxic Threat in Thawing Permafrost: Scientists are tracking neurotoxic methylmercury production in North America’s largest peatland, Christian Elliott, Hakai, 3/15/23
Banking on the Seaweed Rush: Seaweed farmers promise to feed us, combat climate change, support coastal communities, provide wildlife habitat, and more. Can seaweed do it all? Nicola Jones, Hakai, 3/14/23
Save the Planet by Eating This Big Ugly Fish: The hardiest freshwater fish in America could revive the Midwest’s fishing industry—or destroy the Great Lakes. So much depends on your appetite, Kate Knibb, Wired, 3/15/23
The astonishing salt marsh-building power of the humble, tiny mussel: Researchers transplanted 200,000 of them and tracked the elevation of marshlands over 3 years; they contributed to new land at 5x the predicted rate, Warren Cornwall, Anthropocene, 3/15/23
Moooove over: How single-celled yeasts are doing the work of 1,500-pound cows: Cowless dairy is here, with the potential to shake up the future of animal dairy and plant-based milks, Laura Reiley, Washington Post, 3/12/23
You Should Build a Frog Pond: Will someone please think of the urban amphibian? Emma Marris, The Atlantic, 3/8/23: “Our cities can be wetlands too, at least in spots. Our kids can watch tadpoles on summer days. And in the spring, we can listen to the frogs sing at dusk.”
You can help track the impacts of climate change in your yard: Trained volunteers are helping to monitor more than 1,000 species through a program called Nature’s Notebook, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 3/17/23. Nature’s Notebook: Become an Observer in Three Steps.
The Unpredictable Abilities Emerging From Large AI Models: Large language models like ChatGPT are now big enough that they’ve started to display startling, unpredictable behaviors, Stephen Ornes, Quanta, 3/16/23
What Have Humans Just Unleashed? Call it tech’s optical-illusion era: Not even the experts know exactly what will come next in the AI revolution, Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 3/16/23
The stupidity of AI: Artificial intelligence in its current form is based on the wholesale appropriation of existing culture, and the notion that it is actually intelligent could be actively dangerous, James Bridle, The Guardian, 3/16/23
Rummage Sale Planet, Hillary Predko, Scope of Work, 3/16/23: “Adam Minter’s Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale traces the movement of goods across borders and oceans, from developed economies like the United States and Japan to their second lives in developing countries like Malaysia or India.”
Humans will achieve immortality in 7 years, says futurist: Ray Kurzweil is famous for making predictions that have actually become true, Sejal Sharma, Interesting Engineering, 3/16/23. (Ed. note: why on earth would this be a good thing?)
A ghastly horror in her eyes appears;
But yet she knows not, who it is she fears;
In vain she offers from her self to run,
And drags about her what she strives to shun.
—from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses Book the Fourteenth,” tr. under the direction of Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, William Congreve
Health & Wellness
I called for more research on the COVID ‘lab leak theory.’ Here’s what I found out, Michael Worobey, LA Times, 3/8/23: “We found that the earliest known COVID cases lived much closer to and more centered around the Huanan market than could be explained by chance.” Ed. note: Attended a lecture given by this scientist. He convinced me.
The Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started the Pandemic: A new analysis of genetic samples from China appears to link the pandemic’s origin to raccoon dogs, Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 3/16/23
The Pandemic Didn't Create a Mental Health Crisis After All, Study Finds, Yeji Jesse Lee, Science Alert, 3/17/23: "Rather than a mental health crisis, at a population level there has been a high level of resilience.”
You probably have “forever chemicals” in your body. Here’s what that means: A chemist explains how PFAS can harm us — and what to do about them, Benji Jones, Vox, 3/15/23: “Almost everybody has some PFAS in their drinking water. And if you’re actually measuring what’s in your blood, 98 percent to 99 percent of people have PFAS in their bodies, so it’s literally in everybody…You can go to websites like Environmental Working Group, which say what to look for and score different products according to their health implications.”
New PFAS guidelines – a water quality scientist explains technology and investment needed to get forever chemicals out of US drinking water, Joe Charbonet, The Conversation, 3/16/23
Experimental pill achieves complete cancer remission in 18 people with aggressive leukemia: Preliminary results for the pharmaceutical revumenib suggest that it may have saved lives of terminal patients, including the young architect Algimante Daugelaite,Manuel Alsede, El Pais, 3/15/23
World’s first mRNA vaccine against deadly plague bacteria is 100% effective: The study is a promising step towards developing safe and effective mRNA vaccines against bacteria, Sejal Sharma, Interesting Engineering, 3/16/23
Trichloroethylene: An Invisible Cause of Parkinson’s Disease? E. Ray Dorsey, et al, IOSPress, 3/14/23: “Given the disease’s growing rates— more than can be explained by aging alone— other less visible causes must be contributing to its rise. One of these may be trichloroethylene (TCE), a ubiquitous chemical that has contaminated countless sites and poses health risks to those who are (often unknowingly) exposed via their work or their environment.
Mediterranean diet adherence is associated with lower dementia risk, independent of genetic predisposition: findings from the UK Biobank prospective cohort study, Oliver M. Shannon et al, BMC Medicine, 3/14/23: “Higher adherence to the MedDiet was associated with 4.2–6.9% lower risk for dementia…”
Chew slowly, keep moving and eat 30 plants a week: 12 rules for gut health: What to eat, when, how to do it properly – and what to avoid. Experts lay out the food habits that will make a real difference to your health, Emin Saner, The Guardian, 3/19/23
What We Still Don’t Understand About Postpartum Psychosis: The recent tragedy surrounding Lindsay Clancy and her children underscores popular misconceptions about a grave and mysterious disorder, Jessica Winter, New Yorker, 3/14/23
If you cannot understand English, you will be moved out of the way.
In the event of a loss, you’d better look out for yourself.
Your insurance was cancelled because we can no longer handle
your frightful claims. Our handlers lost your luggage and we
are unable to find the key to your legal case.
—from “We Are Not Responsible,” Harryette Mullen
Birds
This crow is ‘very intelligent’ — and it’s struggling to survive in the wild: Plans to repopulate Hawaii’s forests with its “very intelligent” crows have been upended in part by its natural predator, the Hawaiian hawk. Now scientists are tracking the hawk in order to save the corvids, Dino Grandoni, Washington Post, 3/17/23
Merlin falcons are small but fast birds, Martin Hagne, Victoria Advocate, 3/17/23: “they are expert hunters. They will also take large insects, bats emerging from bat colonies and evens small mammals when possible.”
Invasive snails are helping an endangered bird make a comeback in Florida: But relying on a non-native ‘surrogate’ can have detrimental impacts on an ecosystem, expert says, Magan Carty, CBC Radio, 3/17/23
This week we are likely to be witness to an extraordinary event in American history, the indictment and arrest of a former President of the United States. It’s likely that this will be the tipping point that will change the course of all our lives. But there is so much going on in the world, it is difficult to see the trajectory of what lies ahead. I hope we are ready for what comes next. If enough of us remain committed to love, to an honest, deeply felt engagement with the world and each other, we will find a way through. We must. Much love to you all and thanks for reading. —David