The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 82, December 5, 2021 (V2 #30)
“What sounds more radical to you? Abolishing the filibuster to save our democracy or destroying our democracy to save the filibuster?” —Robert Reich, on Twitter, 11.30.21
“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.” —Noam Chomsky
Democracy and Hope
It Is Time To Admit That Democracy Is a Partisan Issue, Marc Elias, Democracy Docket, 12/3/21: “Failing to acknowledge the stark partisan divide over voting rights and democracy obscures the breadth of the anti-democratic wave sweeping America. When only 32% of Republicans believe voting is a fundamental right, it’s hard to argue that democracy is not a partisan issue. And when nearly the same percentage of Republicans believe that “true Americans” may need to use violence to “save” the country, it is impossible to maintain the façade that this is only a small part of the Republican Party.”
We may have already missed our last, best chance to bolster American democracy, Perry Bacon, Jr., Washington Post, 12/2/21: “In last year’s election, Americans did not punish Republicans for their radical, anti-democratic turn with a resounding electoral defeat. Now, more than a year later, we can clearly see horrible and potentially irreversible implications of that. Was Nov. 3, 2020, our last and best chance to save our democracy?”
Fearing a Repeat of Jan. 6, Congress Eyes Changes to Electoral Count Law: Members of the special House committee investigating the Capitol riot are among those arguing for an overhaul of a more than century-old statute enacted to address disputed election, Luke Broadwater, Nick Corasaniti, NY Times, 12/4/21 (Ed. Note – this is an important story)
Disingenuousness ruled, irony died, and flat-out falsehoods rang out loudly in the Supreme Court today, Lucian Truscott IV, Newsletter, 12/1/21: “Irony died a silent death today at the Supreme Court. Disingenuousness and falsehood prevailed and will continue to triumph in this land so long as the hold on the court by the Republican Party lasts.”
Roe ‘settled’ law? Justices’ earlier assurances now in doubt, Lisa Mascaro, APNews, 12/2/21 (Ed. Note: Thank you, Susan Collins.)
‘Historical accident’: how abortion came to focus white, evangelical anger: A short history of the Roe decision’s emergence as a signature cause for the right, Jessica Glenza, The Guardian, 12/5/21
"Moms For Liberty" says book about MLK violates new law banning CRT in Tennessee, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 12/1/21
Trump allies work to place supporters in key election posts across the country, spurring fears about future vote challenges, Amy Gardner, Tom Hamburger, Josh Dawsey, Washington Post, 11/29/21
Energy, climate, change
Green Upheaval: The New Geopolitics of Energy, Jason Bordoff, Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2022: “Talk of a smooth transition to clean energy is fanciful: there is no way that the world can avoid major upheavals as it remakes the entire energy system, which is the lifeblood of the global economy and underpins the geopolitical order.”
USA TODAY investigation reveals a stunning shift in the way rain falls in America, Nicole Carole, USA Today, 12/3/21
How people are working to protect California’s giant sequoias from wildfires: Severe fires killed sequoias in 2020 and 2021, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 12/1/21
Fertilizer washes off Midwest farm fields and taints communities’ drinking water, poisons Gulf of Mexico: As rainfall events become more intense and frequent, fertilizers applied to Midwestern farmland wash away, contaminating waterways near and far, Ignacio Calderon, Investigate Midwest, 11/30/21
When Turtles Fly: A massive human-assisted migration lands stranded sea turtles back in warmer seas, Lauren Owens Lambert, BioGraphic, 11/30/21
Tamarya Sims Is on a Quest for Land: Sims is in the vanguard of young land stewards who embrace farming not just as a means of production, but to cultivate sustainable relationships with the natural world, Melanie Canales, Wired, 11/29/21
Wildfires of Varying Intensity Can Be Good for Biodiversity: The spate of furious wildfires around the world during the past decade has revealed to ecologists how much biodiversity and “pyrodiversity” go hand in hand, Carrie Arnold, Quanta Magazine, 11/29/21
I Joined This Grocery Co-op to Save Money. It Has Totally Reshaped My Relationship to Shopping: Birch Community Services in Portland, Oregon, takes a radical approach to rescuing food, reducing food waste, and helping people manage their money—and futures, Gosia Wozniacka, Civil Eats, 11/30/21
Your Rooftop Garden Could Be a Solar-Powered Working Farm: A new scientific field proposes an idea that could help generate food and energy while reducing a building's cooling costs, Matt Simon, Wired, 12/3/21
Why the Energy Transition Will Be So Complicated: The degree to which the world depends on oil and gas is not well understood, Daniel Yergin, The Atlantic, 11/27/21
A powerful and underappreciated ally in the climate crisis? Fungi: Mycorrhizal fungal networks are a major global carbon sink. When we destroy them, we sabotage our efforts to limit global heating, Toby Kiers, Merlin Sheldrake, The Guardian, 11/30/21
There's so much plastic floating on the ocean surface, it's spawning new marine communities, Li Cohen, CBS News, 12/2/21
‘Like putting a lithium mine on Arlington cemetery’: the fight to save sacred land in Nevada: Thacker Pass is rich in lithium deposits but is also a place of historical and cultural significance to the Paiute people, Brianna Finn, The Guardian, 12/2/21
The World’ Strongest Ocean Current Is Gaining Speed Due To Global Warming: The speeding up of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) could have wide-ranging consequences across the globe, Dese Gowda, Mashable, 11/30/21
Nobel-winning stock market theory used to help save coral reefs: Portfolio selection rules on evaluating risk used to pick 50 reefs as ‘arks’ best able to survive climate crisis and revive coral elsewhere, Karen McVeigh, The Guardian, 11/28/21
Feeling Hopeless About the Climate? Try Our 30-Day Action Plan: Doing something every day will help to change your attitude and create momentum for change, John R. Platt, The Revelator, 12/1/21
I Counted Every Bit of My Trash for One Month on the PCT: I tallied the waste I created for a month of my thru-hike. It was embarrassing. Now, I know how to begin fixing it, Grayson Haver Curran, Outside, 12/2/21
‘Deluge of plastic waste’: US is world’s biggest plastic polluter: At 42m metric tons of plastic waste a year, the US generates more waste than all EU countries combined, Oliver Millman, The Guardian, 12/1/21
Community systems offer alternative paths for solar growth: John Flesher, AP News, 11/28/21
How to Not Melt Down Over Our Warming Planet: WIRED spoke with Maria Ojala, a psychologist studying climate anxiety, about how you can stay focused and active in the face of dread, Simran Sethi, Wired, 12/2/21
Indigenous groups unveil plan to protect 80% of the Amazon in Peru and Ecuador, Atoya Abulu, Laurel Sutherland, MongaBay, 12/3/21
Mythic white sperm whale captured on film near Jamaica: Type of whale immortalised in Moby-Dick has only been spotted handful of times this century, Philip Hoare, The Guardian, 11/29/21
For the Death of 100 Whales
Hung midsea
Like a boat mid-air
The liners boiled their pastures:
The liners of flesh,
The Arctic steamers
Brains the size of a teacup
Mouths the size of a door
The sleek wolves
Mowers and reapers of sea kine.
THE GIANT TADPOLES
(Meat their algae)
Lept
Like sheep or children.
Shot from the sea's bore.
Turned and twisted
(Goya!!)
Flung blood and sperm.
Incense.
Gnashed at their tails and brothers
Cursed Christ of mammals,
Snapped at the sun,
Ran for the Sea's floor.
Goya! Goya!
Oh Lawrence
No angels dance those bridges.
OH GUN! OH BOW!
There are no churches in the waves,
No holiness,
No passages or crossings
From the beasts' wet shore.
—Michael McClure, 1954
Oh My Cron
Some experts suggest Omicron variant may have evolved in an animal host, Helen Branswell, StatNews, 12/2/21
Covid-19 booster jab results raise hopes of beating Omicron: Third dose gives immune system a massive lift, Rhys Blakely, Chris Smyth, The Times (London), 12/2/21
Omicron’s Best- and Worst-Case Scenarios: A new, highly contagious variant could have terrible consequences. But if it ends up causing milder symptoms than Delta, there’s a real upside, Rachel Gutman, The Atlantic, 12/1/21
Omicron possibly more infectious because it shares genetic code with common cold coronavirus, study says, Amy Cheng, Washington Post, 12/3/21
We can prevail over Omicron. We just need to use the tools we have: Masks, vaccines, boosters, rapid tests and anti-Covid pills will all be essential in the months ahead, Eric Topol, The Guardian, 12/1/21
Blinded with Science (but in a good way)
At subatomic level, the past can be the future: quantum researchers: Conventional theory that time can only move forward challenged by study, but the conditions for a ‘backward arrow’ are limited. The question of whether time can be reversed ‘one of the fundamental challenges’ of quantum physics, Stephen Chen, South China Morning Post, 11/26/21
Particle drag race leads to most precise estimate yet of the proton’s mass: New estimate could be used to look for new forces of nature, Adrian Cho, Science, 11/30/31
DeepMind’s AI helps untangle the mathematics of knots: The machine-learning techniques could benefit other areas of maths that involve large data sets, David Castelvecchi, Nature, 12/1/21
Microsoft's New Molecular Controller Makes DNA Writing 1,000 Times Faster: Bring on the zettabyte era, Chris Young, Interesting Engineering, 12/2/21
New discovery opens the way for brain-like computers, University of Gothenberg, Science Daily, 11/29/21: “A study, led by researchers at the University of Gothenburg, has succeeded for the first time in combining a memory function with a calculation function in the same component.”
Stanford engineers propose a simpler design for quantum computers: A relatively simple quantum computer design that uses a single atom to manipulate photons could be constructed with currently available components, McKenzie Prillaman, Stanford News, 11/29/21
‘Amazing science’: researchers find xenobots can give rise to offspring: Xenobots are synthetic lifeforms made by cells from frog embryos and assembling them into clusters, Nicola Davis, The Guardian, 11/29/21
This New Ultra-Compact Camera Is the Size of a Grain of Salt And Takes Stunning Photos, David Nield, Science Alert, 12/4/21: “We can think of completely different ways to build devices in the future.” (Ed. Note: Wow!)
Birds Rule
Virginia program aims to foster grassland bird habitat on farms, Whitney Pipkin, Bay Journal, 11/29/21
Amazonian birds are shrinking in response to climate change, study shows, Sibelia Zanon, MongaBay, 12/2/21: “Climate change poses the greater risk of extinction to South American birds, which are far more sensitive to temperature extremes than birds in temperate climates.”
Why We Didn’t Know That Female Birds Sing: Science and science communication are better when they’re inclusive, Matt Wilkins, Lauryn Benedict, Scientific American, 11/26/21: “It highlights a long-standing bias and helps us think about why that bias persists.”
Regulators Look to Protect a Seabird Hotspot in the Middle of the Atlantic Ocean: Scientists have identified a key seabird feeding ground in need of safeguarding, Dean Russell, Smithsonian Magazine, 12/1/21
The Case for Pigeon-Watching: A new book is part ornithology guide, part ode to the misunderstood urban birds, Jessica Leigh Hester, Atlas Obscura, 11/29/21
Birding In An Age Of Extinctions By Martin Painter — Review, GrrlScientist, Forbes, 11/29/21 — buy Birding in an Age of Extinctions by Martin Painter from Bookshop.org
The Friends of Bernadette Mayer Fund
Bernadette was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She is doing well and her doctors are currently working on a treatment plan, which will likely involve surgery and other treatments. Please consider making a contribution to help.
15 Times
Maybe when time was and made me the time
many times could we and in time when the time came
noticed that and gave you the time of and left him the
left it open for any time and got back on time and how
the time he and served out the time and never noticed
covered up that time and said we’d see some time and kept
what time and asked for the time of and covered
we knew just what kind of time could be had
—Bernadette Mayer
Cool Stuff
Have Yourself a Merry Christmas—Frank Sinatra animated video created by my friends at Fantoons.
The Ironic Twist of Age: What It’s Like to Keep Writing at 91, Hilma Wolitzer, LitHub, 12/2/21: “Recent events can seem as ephemeral as dreams. And those jokes that I used to find so amusing about old people and forgetfulness—“Rose, what do you call that flower with thorns?”—aren’t quite as hilarious these days. Anyone who claims that age is “just a number” is either very young or works for Hallmark.”
Rethinking Humanity, Rethinkx, “EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: We are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most consequential transformation of human civilization in history, a transformation every bit as significant as the move from foraging to cities and agriculture 10,000 years ago.”
Centuries of Sound: An audio mix for every year of recorded sound, 1859 to the present. Latest episode, 1939
Hey, come on now we're marching to the sea
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
Who will take it from you, we will and who are we?
Well, we are volunteers of America (volunteers of America)
Volunteers of America (volunteers of America)
I've got a revolution
Got a revolution —from “Volunteers for America,” sung by Jefferson Airplane, written by Marty Balin and Paul Kanter © Universal Music Publishing Group, Wixen Music Publishing
“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.” —Joan Didion, from Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Stay well all, Happy Hanukkah, keep writing and sending news. And be careful out there. Something’s happening and we are now pretty sure we do know what it is, don’t we?