The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 164, July 2, 2023 (V4 #8)
While the Court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for.—Ketanji Brown Jackson
It is not just the rulings the Roberts Court is making. They created out of [w]hole cloth a bogus, major questions doctrine. They made a mockery of standing. They rewrite laws to fit their radical ideological preferences. They have unilaterally blown up the legitimacy of the Court.—Norman Ornstein
…this Supreme Court seems to be of the view that it’s only people who share their beliefs who get to have the ladder up.—Joyce Vance
It’s time to expand the Supreme Court.—Rep. Cori Bush
Books
Excavators find image of pizza’s possible precursor among Pompeii ruins, Niha Masih, Washington Post, 6/28/23 Caption: Archaeologists discovered this approximately 2,000-year-old Pompeian fresco on the wall of a home in the destroyed Roman city.
Explore the World of Willa Cather in Her Nebraska Hometown: Maybe the author of “O Pioneers!” is no longer the height of literary chic. But a century later she’s still a superstar in her small prairie community, Jeff McGregor, Smithsonian, July/Aug 23
Black Talk on the Move: Lover Man, a newly reissued collection of melancholy stories by Alston Anderson, one of the lost names of Black literature, depicts small-town southern life and postwar migration to the North, Darryl Pinckney, NY Review of Books, 7/20/23 issue
How a 24-hour drag show predicted the last seven years in America: Just before Trump’s election, Taylor Mac staged a spectacular queer history of the US that was mysteriously prophetic about the culture wars that would follow, Lois Beckett, The Guardian, 6/30/23
A walk around the world raises questions about tech, Mark Hurst, Creative Good, 6/30/23: “Viewed at the intimate pace of three miles an hour, I can confirm that Homo sapiens has altered our planet’s ecology to such a radical degree that we should be suffering from mass sleeplessness – not just from bad consciences but from genuine dread.”
‘The Road’ Is the Best Parenting Book of All Time, Kathryn Jezer-Morton, The Cut, 6/26/23: “It’s the present-day story of millions of migrant families moving across the land all over the world. Parents are on the Road with their kids as you read these words.”
Mick Jagger (and Ballet) Inspired His Partner Melanie Hamrick’s Erotic Novel: Still more reminders that our patriarchs still got it, Kenzie Bryant, Vanity Fair, 6/28/23
In Ukraine: Kyiv’s Book Arsenal Festival Draws 28,000, Porter Anderson, Publishing Perspectives, 6/27/23
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars review – Bowie bids farewell to an icon in legendary gig: DA Pennebaker’s documentary offers moving moments and raw immediacy as the musician takes on his final performance as Ziggy Stardust, Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, 6/29/23
Fifty Years of Hip-Hop in a World That Could Not Exist Without It: The musical genre of sociopolitical change, cultural transformation, excess, and fabulousness enters its next half century, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Vanity Fair, 6/29/23
“Glorious But Fragile.” On Looking at the Whole Earth and Finding Peace: The Intersections of Astronomy and Psychology, Marjolijn Van Heemstra, LitHub, 6/29/23: “People are not only destroyers of the ecosystem, but also illuminators of the night.” Book: In Light-Years There’s No Hurry: Cosmic Perspectives on Everyday Life
The Summer of the Whale: The seas and the land are teeming with schadenfreude, LYZ, Men Yell at Me, 6/28/23: “It’s not shocking that Americans are gripped by pro-whale sentiment, given that most of us have more in common with an orca than with someone who can afford a yacht.”
Where Did Our Authorities Go? What if they were an illusion all along? John Warner, Biblioracle Recommends, 7/2/23: “If you can embrace curiosity and not become overly fixed in a position, it can actually be a pretty interesting way to live.”
How Inflammatory Rhetoric Feeds the Insurrectional Fantasies of the Far-Right: on Trump-Inspired Domestic Terrorism, David Neiwert, LitHub, 6/27/23. “The far-right eagerness for civil war eventually took on a life of its own, particularly on white-nationalist-friendly chat forums like 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit, where discussions of extraordinary violence were frequently cloaked in cartoonish jocularity and black irony.” Book: The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right’s Assault on American Democracy
in vast sheets of legible shimmering matter
inspired, don’t you know, by a longitude-latitude motor disturbance
(Earth plunges into new electro-magnetic black space field)—
exhausting! I can’t control my current motor disturbance—
—from “Motor Disturbance,” Kenward Elmslie
Politicks
After Roe’s overturn, Republicans target trans rights using extremist rhetoric: Republican presidential candidates attacked trans people and the LGBTQ+ community at a gathering of the religious right last week, Chris Stein, The Guardian, 6/26/23
America after affirmative action: Some thoughts on where we're headed as a nation, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 6/30/23: “It sure seems like there are going to be a lot of lawsuits before we know exactly how this new system works.”
The Roberts Court’s Cynical Use of Free Speech to Allow Discrimination: If a Colorado web designer can refuse to serve a same-sex couple, why can’t a business owner discriminate against Blacks, Muslims, and Jews? Robert Kuttner, American Prospect, 6/30/23: “The claim that the supposed incursion on the "speech" of someone who objects to serving a class of people trumps the rights of such people to receive the same services as others is a tortured construction of free speech.”
This Supreme Court Is Not Normal: The conservative majority just effectively gave businesses the right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ Americans under the First Amendment, and struck down Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plans. Yet the president remains reluctant to entertain major court reforms, Eric Lutz, Vanity Fair, 6/30/23
Don't Be Surprised by Moore v. Harper: The Federalist Society justices are not political partisans; they are interest group partisans, Michael Podhorzer, Weekend Reading, 6/27/23: “In this decision, the Federalist Society justices announce to anyone ready to listen that they will be back again if needed to substitute their preferences for voters’.” (DW: Must read!)
‘Democracy is on life support’: the organizers fighting voter suppression in the US south: After the 2013 supreme court ruling decimated the Voting Rights Act, advocates are working round the clock to ensure the ballot is accessible to all, Kira Lerner, The Guardian, 6/27/23
Trump, Who Has the Mind of a Child, Still Thinks the Classified Documents He Got Indicted for Keeping Belong to Him: He’s apparently still calling them “my documents,” and wants his lawyers to get them back, Bess Levin, Vanity Fair, 6/29/23
Wife's Oil and Gas Leasing Deal Raises New Ethics Concerns About Justice Alito: "Alito doesn't have to come across like a drunken Paul Thomas Anderson character gleefully confessing to drinking our collective milkshakes in order to be a real-life, run-of-the-mill political villain," quipped the founder of one ethics watchdog, Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, 6/26/23
Why Are We Letting the Red State Welfare Oligarchs Mooch Off Blue States? Red states are mooching off the Blue states, using that essentially stolen tax money to reinvent the old Confederacy, “own the libs,” and wage “war on woke...” Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 6/27/23: “This loophole in US tax law is driving this bizarre process where citizens in Blue states are forced by law to pay for all-white “Christian” academies, enforcement of abortion restrictions, persecution of asylum seekers and immigrants, and political attacks on queer people.”
What makes a social studies textbook "woke" in Ron DeSantis' Florida, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 6/26/23: “In several instances, the reviewers of rejected texts mischaracterized basic factual information as biased, inappropriate, or ideological.”
An unlikely provocateur, Miss Texas, takes on the state’s GOP leaders, Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Washington Post, 6/30/23: “Her platform — diversity and inclusion — represents much of what Texas has been outlawing.”
An alternative to "tax the rich:” It’s not wealth that’s the problem, it’s the distribution of it, Elle Griffin, The Elysian, 6/26/23: “According to the Economic Policy Institute, between 1978 and 2021 CEO compensation grew by 1,460% and top 0.1% compensation grew by 385%, while typical worker compensation grew by only 18.1%.”
The US supreme court has dismantled our rights but we still believe in them. Now we must fight: The court is part of a gang of reactionaries clawing back rights we already won, which means we can win them back, Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian, 7/2/23: “The right would like us to feel defeated and powerless. We can feel devastated and still feel powerful or find our power. This is not a time to quit. It’s a time to fight.”
My wants were few
They were until I wanted you
And when I set my eyes on you
Nothing else would do, nothing else would do
—from “We Lived Alone,” Connie Converse
Science & Environment
Scientists Glimpse The Universe's First Lights at The Dawn of Time, Michelle Starr, ScienceAlert, 6/26/23: “Relatively little is known about this epoch, but the new observations, obtained using the James Webb Space Telescope, show that star formation was rife, and the light of this process played a significant role in clearing the clouds of the early Universe.”
A New Map of the Universe, Painted With Cosmic Neutrinos: Physicists finally know where at least some of these high-energy particles come from, which helps make the neutrinos useful for exploring fundamental physics, Thomas Lewton, Quanta, 6/29/23
In a major discovery, scientists say space-time churns like a choppy sea: The mind-bending finding suggests that everything around us is constantly being roiled by low-frequency gravitational waves, Joel Achenbach, Victoria Laggard, Washington Post, 6/28/23
‘It was an accident’: the scientists who have turned humid air into renewable power: Tesla speculated electricity from thin air was was possible – now the question is whether it will be possible to harness it on the scale needed to power our homes, Ned Carter Miles, The Guardian, 7/2/23: “If you can engineer and scale it, and avoid the thing getting contaminated by atmospheric microbes, it should work.”
In a Montana Courtroom, Debate Over Whether States Can Make a Difference on Climate Change, and if They Have a Responsibility to Try: The first youth-led climate lawsuit to go to trial considered if a statute preventing the state’s environmental agency from denying permits for fossil fuel development contradicts its constitution’s guarantee of a “clean and healthful environment,” Richard Forbes, Inside Climate News, 6/28/23
How electrifying steam could cut beer’s carbon emissions: AtmosZero has developed an energy efficient, electrified boiler that New Belgium Brewing plans to install at its main facility next year, James Temple, MIT Technology Review, 6/27/23: “To decarbonize industry, we must decarbonize heat,” says Addison Stark, chief executive and cofounder of the startup.”
Mosquito that can carry viral infections spreads northward in U.S., Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which can transmit dengue and Zika after biting an infected person, have been documented recently in Nevada, Utah, and Nebraska, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 6/28/23
How Plastics Are Poisoning Us: They both release and attract toxic chemicals, and appear everywhere from human placentas to chasms thirty-six thousand feet beneath the sea. Will we ever be rid of them? Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker, 6/26/23
Microplastic Exposure Breeds Antimicrobial Resistance: Laboratory research shows that someway, somehow, PVC plastic makes microbes more virulent and resilient, Michael Allen, Hakai, 6/26/23
How a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius impacts billions: Under current climate policies, billions will face deadly heat, with the elderly, children, women and people with disabilities hit worst. A global network of heat officers are tackling the problem in their own cities, Alaistair Walsh, DW.com, 6/26/23
Meltwater is hydro-fracking Greenland’s ice sheet through millions of hairline cracks – destabilizing its internal structure, Alun Hubbard, The Conversation, 6/29/23
‘It burns wild and free up there’: Canada fires force US crews to shift strategy: Different strategies in fighting wildfires have prompted new questions about best practices in the face of a global challenge, Gabrielle Canon, Leyland Cecco, The Guardian, 6/29/23
Scorching heat and Canada wildfires could be tied to ‘wavy, blocky’ jet stream: Some researchers think climate change is disrupting the jet stream's flow and causing it to bake regions in heat longer, Evan Bush, NBC News, 6/28/23
Cement emits as much CO2 as India. Why is it so hard to fix? The cement industry is responsible for 8 percent of global carbon emissions -- triple the emissions of the aviation industry, Shannon Osaka, Washington Post, 6/27/23
Extreme Drought Threatens Farmers’ Livelihoods and Rural Economy: The signs of a changing climate harbinger hard times for agricultural communiities in the Great Plains and the Midwest, Bennet Goldstein, Barn Raiser, 6/26/23
Cherokee Push for Dam Removal to Restore Fish Populations: A victory for wildlife on North Carolina's Oconaluftee River, Daniel Walton, Barn Raiser, 6/29/23
Saving This Fish Means Saving Our Tribe’s Future: A group of Northern California Tribes are working hard to save the Clear Lake hitch, a small fish that has played a large role in our culture. But we can’t do it alone, Ron Montez, Sr., Jeanine Pfeiffer, Civil Eats, 6/28/23
How volcano magma could help meet green economy’s demand for metal: Metals could be extracted from magmatic brines while producing geothermal power at same time, say scientists, Kate Ravilius, The Guardian, 6/28/23
China created COVID-19 as a 'bioweapon,' Wuhan researcher claims: Chao Shao asserts that the virus was deliberately engineered by China as a "bioweapon," and that his colleagues were tasked with identifying the most effective strain for spreading, Staff, Jerusalem Post, 6/28/23
We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got
—from “Five Years,” David Bowie
Health & Wellness
How gene-edited microbiomes could improve our health: Scientists are engineering microbes to make healthier compounds. They hope they’ll help treat disease and save the planet, Jessica Hamzelou, MIT Technology Review, 6/30/23
What’s Behind the Rise of Ticks and Tick-Borne Illnesses? It’s not just climate change. Land use change, forest fragmentation, and suburbanization are also driving this public health issue, Ellyn LaPointe, Sierra, 6/27/23
Bird flu defence discovered in our bodies, James Gallagher, BBC News, 6/29/23: “In laboratory experiments, researchers uncovered a section of our genetic code - our DNA - that becomes activated in response to an infection. It is called BTN3A3.”
It’s Time to End the Tyranny of Ultra-Processed Food: Industrially processed pizzas, cereals, and convenience foods are responsible for a host of diseases. Policymakers and doctors need to lead the food fight, Chris Van Tulleken, Wired, 6/30/23
air in a hornet’s nest
over the water makes a
solid, six-sided music…
—from “A Vulnerary,” Jonathan Williams
Birds
These retired teachers started with a little bird guide, and ended with a magnum opus, Louis Sahagun, LA Times, 6/29/23: “Their 500-page book, “Birds of Inyo County, California, including Death Valley National Park,” is expected to be published later this summer by the donor-funded nonprofit Western Field Ornithologists. “Exhaustively researched, every ornithological record ever published about Inyo County has been uncovered by the Heindels,” BRAVO!
How flocks of birds are able to fly close together without colliding Fascinated by the closely co-ordinated manoeuvres of starling flocks and other birds? How birds are able to synchronise so precisely - and avoid crashing, Phil Gates, Discover Wildlife, 6/29/23
US Interior Secretary Pledges To Help Hawaii’s Imperiled Forest Birds: A new Hawaii "keystone" plan aims to help the islands' remaining forest bird species stave off extinction from avian malaria, Marcel Honore, Honolulu Civil Beat, 6/27/23
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.—from “I, Too, Sing America,” Langston Hughes
I’ve been to the mountaintop…I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Even with all of this week’s news, I’ll take MLK’s optimism, ecumenism, and belief in the future over the rancorous selfishness and backwards hatred of the American right wing any day, and especially today, this week. Wishing you the same. Much love to all, and thanks for your ongoing support. —David
Please keep em coming!