The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 257, April 13, 2025 (V5 #49)
Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. ‘Patriotism’ is its cult…Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.—Erich Fromm
I like the fact that they sat around and called Joe Biden sleepy Joe Biden. But at least you could sleep at night because you didn't have to worry about your 401 K disappearing.— Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)
Books, Music, Art, Culture
Indigenous Art History Has Been Waiting for You to Catch Up: The late Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s final curatorial salvo — the largest show of Native American art to date — carries an elegiac weight, but also thrums with life, Petala Ironcloud, Hyperallergic, 4/8/25
The Smithsonian could be the beginning of Trump’s plan to edit history. Or the end: The president may not like how the museum and research institution tells the American story — but Americans do, Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 4/10/25: “Apart from family and friends, museums and libraries are, in fact, the most trusted sources of information in this country.”
‘I thought I was going to die – and it was so freeing’: Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus on stardom, breakups and surviving cancer, Alexis Petridis, The Guardian, 4/8/25: “His gleefully puerile take on punk brought him fame, an art collection and a Beverly Hills mansion – then the band split and he was diagnosed with lymphoma. How did he bounce back?” Book: Fahrenheit-182: A Memoir
‘Have the courage to walk away’: Bon Iver on romance, retirement and his rapturous new record: Riven with anxiety from years of touring, Justin Vernon found he couldn’t leave the house. Then a new relationship changed his concept of love. His radiant new album shares the revelations, Laura Snapes, The Guardian, 4/11/25: “SABLE, fABLE”
Students and the social life of books: Impressions from a year of parenting, Derek Krissof, Book Work, 4/12/25: “…the cost involved in centering books in the liberal arts…is absolutely modest in the grand scheme of higher education.”
AI isn’t what we should be worried about – it’s the humans controlling it, Billy J. Stratton, The Conversation, 4/7/25: “I see the real issue being whether humanity has the wherewithal to channel this technology to build a fairer, healthier, more prosperous world.”
The Zeigarnik Engine: Turning Open Loops into Momentum, Joan Westenberg, Newsletter, 4/9/25: “…the principle that unfinished tasks occupy more cognitive space than completed ones. It’s not just about memory; it’s about momentum, tension, and drive….Give your future self something to finish. Not something to start.”
The Theater of Intimacy: How Bill Maher Normalizes the Abnormal, Mike Brock, Notes from the Circus, 4/12/25: “What's most disturbing about Maher's account, if accurate, is that it actually deepens Trump's moral culpability rather than mitigating it. Far from presenting exculpatory evidence, Maher has inadvertently revealed something even more damning: Trump knows exactly what he's doing.”
America Is Now One Giant Milgram Experiment: Stanley Milgram would have understood this morally cretinous moment all too well, Sasha Abramsky, Nation, 4/11/25: “In Trump’s fascist netherworld, there are a shockingly large number of Good Americans, people who seem incapable of rejecting unjust orders or understanding the moral implications of acquiescence in organized cruelty.”
Uniting in Universal Weirdness: It’s time for the greatest crossover plot in the history of Western civilization, Douglas Rushkoff, Newsletter, 4/7/25: “Breathe it in, metabolize it, and come to see it as the last gasp of a 400-year reign of terror executed in our name but in no one’s best interests. It’s not a matter of us and them. It’s really about us together against ‘it.’”
Muriel Rukeyser's Posthumous Victories: on a much-derided poet, Atar Hadari, Republic of Letters, 4/8/25: “Rukeyser’s career relied on her learning to work like water, going around or over any obstacle, sometimes delivering a message refused in one work by infiltrating it into another.”
I open out a way, they have covered my sky with crystal
I come forth by day, I am born a second time,
I force a way through, and I know the gate
I shall journey over the earth among the living.
—From “The Book of the Dead: Absalom,” Muriel Rukeyser
Politics, Economics, Technology
The rise of end times fascism: A businessman’s fist striking the Earth like a meteor, scattering debris: The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them, Naomi Klein, Astra Taylor, The Guardian, 4/13/25: “The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.”
Thickening Webs On The Christian Right: If you're not already paying attention, you need to be…of the deep and dangerous ties between a second Trump term and Christian Nationalism, Kristen Du Mez, Lincoln Square, 4/12/25
This Passover, We Must Reckon With Israel’s Massacre of Children in Gaza: The Passover story decries a ruler who inflicts atrocities on children. The Israeli military is doing that now in Gaza, Brant Rosen, Truthout, 4/11/25: “…the Passover ritual actually offers us an important opportunity: to squarely face the way the Exodus narrative is playing out in a very real way in our own day, to ask hard questions and avoid the simple, pat answers.”
The Putinization of America: Who’s Driving America Now—And Why Are the Rest of Us Gagged in the Trunk While the Billionaires Floor It? Trump, Musk, and the GOP have hotwired our democracy, stripped it for parts, and are selling the pieces to the highest bidder while telling us to enjoy the ride, Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 4/8/25
What Do 300 Students, Billions in Funding, and a Loyalty Pledge Have in Common? Sharon McMahon, The Preamble, 4/9/25: “Whatever your thoughts are about the war in Gaza, DEI initiatives, or campus protests, it’s worth examining whether any presidential administration, regardless of their political party, should have so much power to police individuals and institutions to which it objects.”
All the arguments for tariffs are wrong and bad:Trump's defenders are flailing, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 4/9/25: “Tariffs are a force for deindustrialization.”
As Trump triggers "sell America", will the result be "stage 4", the politicization of financial markets? Adam Tooze, Chartbook, 4/12/25: “Does the pressure of politicization of markets and market commentary continue to intensify, further undoing the naturalized legitimacy of the dollar system?”
Over 4,000 factory workers laid off as Trump tariffs spark economic chaos: A wave of mass layoffs across the U.S. exposes the real cost of Trump’s trade war, as union leaders and lawmakers warn of deepening instability in American manufacturing, Alexis Sterling, Nation of Change, 4/7/25
The Trump Tariffs Just Got Even Worse: Higher costs, uncertainty and crony capitalism, oh my, Paul Krugman, Newsletter, 4/13/25: “Uncertainty created by ever-changing tariff plans is arguably a bigger problem than the tariffs themselves…The stench of corruption around these policies keeps getting stronger.”
Tim Haugh’s Firing Is a Red Alert for the Nation—and Your Privacy: Ignore this story at your own risk, Olivia of Troye, Unfiltered, 4/8/25: “This wasn't just a firing but a purge of institutional memory, experience, and moral backbone.” DW: you can’t help wondering if DJT is carrying out Putin’s agenda to destroy the West. Media, where are you?
No, the President Cannot Issue Bills of Attainder, Harold Hongju Koh, Fred Halbhuber, Inbar Pe'er, Just Security, 4/9/25: “America’s constitutional order reserves to the judicial branch alone the power to determine guilt and impose punishment following due process. Executive orders that bypass this structure threaten…the very separation of powers that shields every citizen from the arbitrary exercise of authority the Framers so deeply feared.”
This Is Why Dictatorships Fail: The authors of the Constitution separated powers for a reason, Anne Applebaum, Atlantic, 4/10/25: “If the Republican Party does not return Congress to the role it is meant to play and the courts don’t constrain the president, this cycle of destruction will continue and everyone on the planet will pay the price.”
Welcome to Autocratic Backfire: Imposing their will on the nation and the world is what matters to strongmen, but destructive policies made in an echo chamber have consequences, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, 4/9/25: “The Trump-Musk Sabotage America Syndicate has operated at a dizzying pace to wreck government as we knew it and remake it into a power-consolidation, personal-enrichment and foreign autocratic-empowerment vehicle…. if history is any guide, a reckoning will come.”
Trump's Psychological Vulnerability: And the Destruction of the American Economy, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 4/10/25: “… too much power brings out the worst in people -- especially among the worst of people…. When you elevate the mad king, you elevate the madness.”
The Third-Worlding of America: How to destroy 80 years of credibility in less than 3 months, Paul Krugman, Newsletter, 4/11/25: “Dreaming of sanity, without much hope…”
"We create our own reality" - Trump's delirious negative-sum populism, or how the Empire comes home, Adam Tooze, Chartbook, 4/11/25: “Who benefits?... Trump’s effort to reframe America’s relations with the world economy seem almost entirely devoid of what analysts generally call a “social base”…. The madness is now everyone’s reality.”
$1,000,000,000,000, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 4/10/25: “Monday, Trump announced that he was preparing to propose a $1 trillion military budget for the 2026 fiscal year….More than half of all military spending is transferred to military contractors.”
This is called “capital flight:” It usually only happens to poor countries, and it never ends well, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 4/12/25
The Clear and Present Danger to the American Rule of Law: Trump’s attacks on the courts and Big Law are an existential threat to the legal system. Expect a reckoning, Richard Zitrin, Intercept, 4/8/25: “Will the reckoning mean millions of people taking to the streets? Courts ordering the army to stage a coup to restore the Constitution? What happens at that reckoning may well determine whether our democracy survives or ends on the eve of its 250th birthday.”
Let’s Not Forget to Blame the Electoral College for this Shit: There's a cost to letting one region pick the president, Jeff Maurer, I Might Be Wrong, 4/7/25
‘Organizing and Mobilizing Works’: Team Trump Reverses Social Security Phone Cuts After Uproar: “We sounded the alarm, and they're backing off," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "But the fight's not over,” Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, 4/9/25
There Was a Record 5 to 6 Million People Who Took to the Streets to Stop Trump on Saturday! — And the Only Sound of Silence You Hear is from the Media and the Democratic Party, Michael Moore, Newsletter, 4/8/25
The Artifice of the Deal: Goliath Awaits the Slingshot, Joe Klein, Sanity Clause, 4/10/25: “Bullies, in the end, are not remembered for their chesty push, but for their glass jaws.”
Why Dems Must Call Out Trump's Authoritarianism: Polls show that voters care more the economy than the fall of democracy, we should try to change their mind, Dan Pfeiffer, Message Box, 4/13/25
Why are Democrats pulling their punches on Trump’s disastrous trade war? The party is blowing its chance to mount an offensive against protectionism, Catherine Rampell, WaPo, 4/11/25
X-ing out X: The power and promise of collective non-cooperation, Waleed Shahid, The.Ink, 4/13/25: “If the opposition can’t leave the authoritarian’s propaganda platform, how exactly does it plan to stop authoritarianism?” DW: I’ve quit X. You should too.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia's Wrongful Deportation and Imprisonment Reveals the Horrors of Trump's Authoritarianism: Though the Supreme Court handed the administration a defeat, the fight to bring him home should mobilize a broader resistance, Robert Tracinski, Unpopular Front, 4/11/25
How Universities Can Save Themselves: The crisis of the universities is worse than they realize. They must rediscover their core mission, Nils Gilman, Persuasion, 4/11/25
The Invisible College of the Future: on the university escape pod option, John Pistelli, Republic of Letters, 4/10/25: “The modern university is almost certainly gone for good, gone with the dream of secular progress …. It is the mind wandering at leisure, not the mind chased by moralists or subjected to metrics, that stumbles across new forms of the true, the good, and the beautiful.”
Fomenting Antisemitism: Not Combating It, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 4/12/25: “The use of the word ‘antisemitism’ as a covering pretext for defunding education empties the concept of meaning.”
But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I
—from “In Those Years,” Adrienne Rich
Science, Environment, Wilderness
‘All other avenues have been exhausted’: Is legal action the only way to save the planet? Monica Feria-Tinta is one of a growing number of lawyers using the courts to make governments around the world take action, Samira Shackle, The Guardian, 4/8/25
Computer models have been accurately predicting climate change for 50 years: A research scientist found that many 1970s-era models were ‘pretty much spot-on.’ Today’s models are far more advanced, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 4/10/25
What Is An Emergency? Thinking as calmly as possible about where we find ourselves, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 4/9/25: “Each “emergency” we’re supposedly dealing with is, at worst, a long-term problem that needs serious and patient work, work that had begun in earnest under the Biden administration.”
Bringing ‘Good Fire’ Back to the Land: Righting a historic wrong, California now allows Indigenous cultural burns. Its healing effects ripple through tribes, forests and waterways, Michaela Haas, Reasons to be Cheerful, 4/10/25
Bayer’s Effort to Block Roundup Lawsuits Kicks Into High Gear: The agrichemical giant is lobbying for state and federal laws that would give it legal immunity from claims that Roundup causes cancer, and launched a new ad blitz, Lisa Held, Civil Eats, 4/8/25
Trump’s EPA Plans to Stop Collecting Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data From Most Polluters: Climate experts expressed shock and dismay at the move: “It would be a bit like unplugging the equipment that monitors the vital signs of a patient that is critically ill,” one said, Sharon Lerner, ProPublica, 4/10/25
Trump’s new goal: Revive a major climate pollutant that power markets have turned against: But even coal-friendly Republicans and executives say it won’t revive the industry to its former glory, Josh Siegel, Catherine Morehouse, Alex Guillén, Politico, 4/8/25
Clean energy powered 40% of global electricity in 2024, report finds: Thinktank says solar has been fastest-growing energy source for last 20 years, but remains dwarfed by hydro power, Jillian Ambrose, The Guardian, 4/7/25
The ocean fertilization experiment nobody can control: Tonga Kermadec doesn't care what you think about what he's doing, Quico Toro, One Percent Brighter, 4/7/25: “Tonga Kermadec isn’t a person. It’s a string of shallow undersea volcanoes stretching across the South Pacific…. it’s doing more to combat climate change than a thousand paper-pushing human NGOs.”
Gopher tortoises find new home on Florida coast after astonishing journey to flee hurricane: ‘Everybody in the ecosystem benefits from gopher tortoises being there,’ says ranger at park where the animals settled, Richard Luscombe, The Guardian, 4/7/25: “I think this is a really ecologically important event.”
It’s not march of the penguins, but the great migration of flies is major force in ecosystems and economies: In a new paper, scientists make a compelling case for preserving migration corridors for hundreds of species of tiny flies, Warren Cornwall, Anthropocene, 4/9/25
Scientists complete largest wiring diagram and functional map of the brain to date: The MICrONS Project is considered the most complicated neuroscience experiment ever attempted, Allen Inst, ScienceDaily, 4/9/25
You will never be complete
And the strain and thirst are sweet
You have not yet gone too deep
—from “Short Story,” Bon Iver, Justin Vernon/Kacy Hill
Health, Wellness
A fifth of Americans are on Medicaid. Some of them have no idea: Programs with consumer-friendly names and private insurance company involvement add to the confusion, Anna Claire Vollers, Stateline, 4/9/25
America Is Backsliding Toward Its Most Polluted Era: A third of Americans still breathe unhealthy air after decades of improvements—which the Trump administration wants to roll back, Zoë Schlanger, Atlantic, 4/9/25
Eye health linked to dementia risk, Univ of Otago, ScienceDaily,4/8/25: “…blood vessels at the back of the eye -- called retinal microvasculature -- can show early signs someone is at risk of developing dementia.”
tonight the clouds settle on the mountains: pale pink
and then mist, and then no mountain
almost every day I say to someone: "it is not important"
but the wing of it the beak the onyx eye
is that I do not know this either
—from “Invocation,” Han VanderHart (Book: Larks)
Birds, Birding
An Expedition, for Art and Nature: Each spring, hundreds of thousands of cranes converge in Nebraska. The phenomenon draws in artists, conservationists and curious friends alike, Alice Gregory, NY Times, 4/10/25
The Birds Eat the Bees: The crested honey buzzard’s unique adaptations help them eat their favorite food: young bees and wasps, Jude Isabella, Nautilus, 4/9/25
High mercury levels found in Svalbard birds, Ingebjørg Hestvik, Phys.org, 4/8/25: “…the level of mercury was higher than what has been found previously in studies of seabirds in the Arctic.”
Listen: I posted a new Writerscast interview with Nikkya Hargrove about her important memoir, Mama: A Queer Black Woman’s Story of a Family Lost and Found.
The writer Jesse Kornbluth passed away April 3. I interviewed him for Writerscast about his book, Married Sex, in 2015.
Dearest friends – I compile these stories to help us know what matters, to resist fear, and fend off the despair that fear engenders. Let me know what matters to you.
I believe we can defend what we believe in. Do not lose heart! Resist despair! Find joy! We are never alone.
Stay strong. Love the ones you’re with. And take care of yourself too.
Love always—David
The world is dark but it is not hopeless.—Clarence Darrow
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.—Epictetus
Deliberate decomposition is required in a state of advanced decay—from “Four Lectures,” Stephen Rodefer