The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 124, September 25, 2022 (V3 #20)
“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”— Edgar Allan Poe
“…history is not the past — it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record.”—Hilary Mantel
Books and Culture
Hilary Mantel (1952–2022): Remembering Hilary Mantel, NY Review of Books
Jazz legend Pharoah Sanders dead at 81:Revered spiritual jazz saxophonist was known for his unique playing style and collaborations with John Coltrane, Shaad D’Souza, The Guardian, 9/25/22. The full album of Karma (1969). Incredible still, and always.
From Boy to Bono: I was born with melodies in my head, and I was looking for a way to hear them in the world, Bono, New Yorker, 9/19/22: “As I finally left this small town and small island and rose above these flat fields, my mind filled with memories of the phone box on the street, teen-agers with broken bottles and hearts, sweet and sour neighbors, and the vibrant branches full of cherry-tree blossoms outside our house.” From Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story
The Banned Books You Haven’t Heard About: When a book gets censored, it feels good to assume its sales will increase. But that’s not the whole story, Connor Goodwin, The Atlantic, 9/20/22
‘Rapid acceleration’ in US school book censorship leads to 2,500 bans in a year: School districts in 32 states banned 1,648 individual titles in the last school year, a report by Pen America found, Oliver Milman, The Guardian, 9/19/22
How to beat a book ban: students, parents and librarians fight back: As rightwing campaigns for censorship sweep the US, opponents are finding ways to keep books on the shelves, Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian, 9/21/22
“Moonage Daydream”: David Bowie’s Journey, Eoghan Lyng, Culture Sonar, 9/22/22: “Beautifully curated by Brett Morgen, “Moonage Daydream” is nothing short of a triumph, a film that will benefit novices and please die-hards.” Watch the trailer here.
Conjuring Family Through Sour Cream Sugar Cookies: on Making Classic Midwestern Cuisine for the Modern Era, Maren Ellingboe King, LitHub, 9/23/22: from Fresh Midwest: Modern Recipes from the Heartland
‘Traditional’ Jewish American foods keep changing, with cookbooks playing an influential role in how Jews mark Rosh Hashana, Deborah Dash Moore, The Conversation, 9/23/22
“The Field Is Open”: Ocean Vuong on Minari’s Lasting Cultural Legacy : The On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous author reflects on the history of Asian American farmers in an original essay from A24’s Minari screenplay book, Ocean Vuong, Vanity Fair, 9/22/22
Sandra Cisneros May Put You in a Poem: The writer discusses her revealing new book of poetry, “Woman Without Shame,” her peripatetic life, and that infamous blurb for “American Dirt,” Yxta Maya Murray, New Yorker, 9/21/22: “If you don’t tell your most vulnerable secrets, someone will tell them for you, so you’d better get them out there before you die. I don’t want to have any open secrets.”
Poet of the Dispossessed: Joseph Roth was unwavering in his passion for the vanished Austro-Hungarian Empire, which inspired his greatest novel, his hatred of nationalism, and his prophetic and courageous loathing for the Nazis. About everything else, as a new biography shows, he had violently mixed feelings, Hermione Lee, NY Review of Books, 10/6/22 issue
Screaming in Secret: Dahlia Lithwick on the Women Who Work Within the Legal System: “For all the flaws of the legal system, of the court system, and even of the #MeToo movement, it helped us find our way to one another,” Dahlia Lithwick, LitHub, 9/20/22: “Anita Hill told me this: “What would I be doing if I didn’t? If I were holding my tongue and keeping silent?”” from Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America
Lovecraftian intelligence: Is AI an incomprehensible cosmic horror? Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 9/21/22: “My concept … is something along the lines of “a system that behaves like a human-analogous intelligence some or even most of the time, but behaves in catastrophically alien ways in fundamentally unpredictable circumstances.””
The YouTube baker fighting back against deadly “craft hacks:” Ann Reardon spends her time debunking dangerous activities that go viral on the platform—but the craze shows no signs of abating, Amelia Tait, MIT Technology Review, 9/22/22
Secret life of Gerald: the New Zealand MP who spent a lifetime crafting a vast imaginary world: Not even Gerald O’Brien’s wife of 60 years knew of the countless hours he spent drawing and writing stories of his parallel world, Eva Corlett, The Guardian, 9/23/22
700! With two homers in LA, Cardinals great Albert Pujols launches himself into exclusive club, Derrick Goold, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9/24/22
Politicality
‘Something big is happening’: the Iranians risking everything to protest: Five people share their experiences of the protests sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death in custody, as hope of real change grows, Jedidajah Otte, The Guardian, 9/24/22
The Exiled Dissident Fuelling the Hijab Protests in Iran: Since 2014, Masih Alinejad has published videos of Iranian women removing their head scarves. When a twenty-two-year-old died last week in the morality police’s custody, the country exploded, Dexter Filkins, New Yorker, 9/24/22
Flashes of bold UN talk on feminism, masculinity, patriarchy, Sally Ho, AP News, 9/25/22: “Patriarchy is not a monopoly of only one region of the world. It is a world phenomenon.”
Lis Smith Has a Radical Idea for Democrats: Be Normal: Having advised everyone from Andrew Cuomo to Pete Buttigieg to rising star Mallory McMorrow, the seasoned strategist fancies herself a political interpreter in a fragmented party. “When you’re going door-to-door in South Dakota,” she tells Vanity Fair, “you really understand that there are many different ways to be a Democrat,” Joe Hagan, Vanity Fair, 9/21/22
Republican Anti-Voting Lawsuits Pile Up in 2022, Marc Elias, Democracy Docket, 9/21/22
The one Republican Party, Judd Legum, Tesnim Zekeria, Popular Information, 9/22/22: “there is only one Republican Party. Advancing Trump's lies about election fraud — or supporting those that do — is what it takes to remain in good standing.”
Trump’s frightening rally in Ohio shows the media still doesn’t get it, Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post, 9/19/22: “If this were a foreign country, the media would accurately describe the MAGA movement as a far-right cult.”
A Global Recession Induced by Central Bankers: Tight money spreads from Washington to Frankfurt to the Global South, needlessly increasing hardship, Robert Kuttner, American Prospect, 9/19/22
Give Ordinary People a Say On Abortion (and Other Contentious Issues): What I learned as a member of the Irish citizens' assembly, Louise Caldwell, Persuasion, 9/19/22
The Tipping Point of Stupid: In most states, you can’t pass yourself off as an election-denying January 6 truther and still be taken seriously by a majority of voters, Mark Leibovich, The Atlantic, 9/22/22: “We’ve gotten so used to the Trickle-Down-Idiocy Effect that it no longer engenders surprise, let alone outrage.”
Watching Trump Embrace QAnon from the Historical Jewish Quarter of Kraków: Centers hold, until they don’t, Bill McKibben, New Yorker, 9/21/22: “The point … is that we can be lulled into believing that truly terrible things won’t happen because they haven’t quite happened, and then they do.”
Going Nuclear: On thinking the unthinkable, Lawrence Freedman, Comment is Freed, 9/20/22: “We may find it difficult to imagine that Putin can lose, and wonder about how well he will cope with his failed aggression, but it is entirely possible that at some point he will run out of options, and have to look failure in the eye.”
Fiona’s outages rekindle anger over Puerto Rico’s privatized electric grid: “The sad part is that we knew a lot of this would happen,” one activist said after the hurricane knocked out power to 1.5 million customers, Gloria Gonzalez, Politico, 9/19/22
Israeli Forces Deliberately Killed Palestinian American Journalist, Report Shows: A new forensic analysis proves that an Israeli sniper could see that Shireen Abu Akleh was a journalist before firing the bullet that killed her, Alice Speri, The Intercept, 9/20/22
So you can survive when law is lawless (right here)
Feeling sensations that you thought was dead
No squealing and remember that it's all in your head
I ain't happy, I'm feeling glad
I got sunshine in a bag
I'm useless but not for long
The future is coming on
—from “Clint Eastwood,” Gorillaz, written by Damon Albarn/Jamie Hewlett/Del Homosapien
Science and Environment
UN chief warns global leaders: The world is in ‘great peril,’ Jennifer Peltz, AP News, 9/20/22: “We are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, adding that “our world is in peril — and paralyzed.”
Research seeks ways to grow solar and crops together in the skeptical Corn Belt: Researchers want to know how co-locating solar and crops — a practice known as "agrivoltaics" — could benefit farmers and be a salve to a growing strain in the Corn Belt, where rural residents and towns are pushing back on solar projects that can often take farmland out of production, Sarah Bowman, Investigate Midwest, 9/20/22
How close is the Amazon tipping point? Forest loss in the east changes the equation, Liz Kimbrough, MongaBay, 9/20/22: “…the Amazon is approaching a tipping point beyond which it would begin to transition from a lush tropical forest into a dry, degraded savanna. This point may be reached when 25% of the forest is lost.”
Community forest project brings together people who have been excluded from environmentalism: With a new $4.5 million grant, the Shelterwood Collective will manage the land using Indigenous methods, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 9/21/22
The Brutal Legacy of the Longleaf Pine: The carefully-tended longleaf pine forests of North America were plundered by European colonizers. They're still recovering, Lacy M. Johnson, Orion, Sept/Oct 2022: “These are the casualties of the single most violent and destructive force in history—the lie that the only value life has is the wealth that can be forcefully extracted from it.”
In California, a Race to Save the World’s Largest Trees From Megafires: Wildfires killed up to a fifth of the world’s giant sequoias in just two years, but stopping the devastation requires lighting even more fires in their groves, Twilight Greenaway, Inside Climate News, 9/23/22
Indigenous leaders urge businesses and banks to stop supporting deforestation: Amazon ecosystem is on verge of collapse, leaders tell brands such as Apple and Tesla as UN gathers in New York, Oliver Milman, The Guardian, 9/21/22
For a Scientist and Mother, Climate Change Is Generational ‘Robbery:’ Hungarian scientist Diana Ürge-Vorsatz is concerned about how the climate change crisis is impacting children. She sees her research on renewable energy and energy demand as part of the essential work of protecting and restoring the future for the next generation, Nicola Jones, Yale Environment 360, 9/22/22
Humans are dosing Earth’s waterways with medicines. It isn’t healthy, Malavika Vyawahare, MongaBay, 9/22/22
Philadelphia’s Diatom Archive Is a Way, Way, Wayback Machine: A cache of phytoplankton held at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University is helping to reconstruct historical coastlines, Jack Tamisiea, Hakai, 9/20/22
‘These kids can find anything’: California teens identify two new scorpion species, The students traveled to salt lakes to collect specimens of unknown arachnids living in the harsh environment, Matthew Cantor, The Guardian, 9/19/22
Lawns Are Dumb. But Ripping Them Out May Come With a Catch: Meticulous turf is environmentally terrible. Yet grass does have one charm: It “sweats,” helping cool the local area, Matt Simon, Wired, 9/22/22
Lupus Patients Go Into Remission in 'Spectacular' Immunotherapy Trial, Clare Watson, Science Alert, 9/19/22
New study seeks to explain the ‘Mandela Effect’ – the bizarre phenomenon of shared false memories, Deepasri Prasad, Wilma Bainbridge, The Conversation, 9/23/22: “…research we have conducted shows that people tend to remember and forget the same images as one another, regardless of the diversity of their individual experiences. Recently, we have shown these similarities in our memories even extend to our false memories.
Neptune and its rings shown in striking new light by Webb telescope: Farthest planet from sun and its satellites revealed in unprecedented detail by space telescope’s infrared imager, Agence France-Presse, The Guardian, 9/21/22
let snow soothe you
make your healing water
clear sweet
a sacred spring
where the thirsty
may drink
animals all
—bell hooks, from “Appalachian Elegy”
Birds
Can AI stop rare eagles flying into wind turbines in Germany? Cameras on turbines being trained to recognise lesser spotted eagles, which are endangered in country, Philip Oltermann, The Guardian, 9/20/22
Duluth's Hawk Ridge birdwatching mecca: 50 years and counting: From hawk-shooting hotspot to hilltop birdwatching reserve, the 50th anniversary celebrates conservation victory, John Myers, Duluth News Tribune, 9/16/22
The Puerto Rican Plain Pigeon Can’t Take Another Big Hurricane: Hampered by habitat loss and besieged by climate change–boosted hurricanes, this Caribbean species may not survive the next big storm, Michael Allen, Hakai, 9/19/22
This Tiny Brazilian Island Could Hold the Key to the Purple Martin’s Future: Vast numbers of the swallows pass through one roost in the heart of the Amazon before winging their way to North American birdhouses. Studying it could provide clues to the species’ decades-long decline, Daniel Grossman, Audubon Magazine, Fall 2022
They say that patriotism is the last refuge
To which a scoundrel clings
Steal a little and they throw you in jail
Steal a lot and they make you king
—Bob Dylan, “Sweetheart Like You”
Upcoming event: Escape from Humanity, Elvia Wilk, Alexandra Kleeman, Adam Khalil & Bayley Sweitzer, Triple Canopy, 10/1/22, virtual or in-person: Sign up here.
Amy Schumer’s Love & Beth (Hulu) has gotten me thinking about how memory shapes the present – and inevitably, how we choose our future. Can we break from the past or is every choice we make predetermined? That’s the struggle, isn’t it?
OM MANI PADME HUM
How to get Puerto Rico help now: We call on all our partners in philanthropy, business and the arts to join our family and make direct investments in Puerto Rico, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Luis A. Miranda Jr., Washington Post, 9/20/22
Stay strong, stay safe, stay well. Support Puerto Rico! Love to all - David