The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 52, May 9, 2021
Happy Birthday to one of baseball’s greatest: Willie Mays turned 90 on May 6; he is the oldest living member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Happy Birthday, The Weird Times. This is the 52nd issue, marking one full year of pandemic inspired reading and thinking. The pandemic isn’t done with us and neither am I.
The beautiful thing about our sport is there is no time. — Jon Lester, baseball pitcher
Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms . . . the game of ball is glorious — Walt Whitman, Brooklyn Eagle, July 23, 1846
JUST BE YOUNG FOR ME
The speed of your throws goes first.
You move slower too.
The location of your throws
suddenly gone. You can’t remember
Where the plate is. You can’t remember
Home. The sky darkens and it has
Nothing to do with rain. You kick
The dirt around the mound and
Think of memories. There is nothing
Left in your arm. But your heart is
Strong, its beating and you’re finally
Learning how to live without caring
About the errors or the score. You catch
Your breath, adjust your belt and cap.
Just breathe now baby. Just breathe.
— E. Ethelbert Miller (his forthcoming book is When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Baseball Stories)
WE ARE AS GODS offers a deep dive into the many sides of Stewart Brand—creator of The Whole Earth Catalog, an influential member of Ken Kesey’s “The Merry Pranksters,” and founder of the modern environmental movement. Brand’s approach to his work and life influenced many, including Steve Jobs, who have gone on to shape our modern world. Now in his 80’s, he looks to leave a legacy for the long-term future with his efforts to resurrect ecosystems through de-extinction.
The man who coined the phrase “we are as gods and might as well get good at it” is now under fire from former allies who believe he’s gone too far, but Brand won’t be easily deterred from a mission he feels is necessary to save the future of the planet.
Science, Ecology and Landscape
Women scientists launch ‘Science Moms,’ a climate campaign aimed at mothers: 'Moms tend to trust other moms,’ YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 5/7/21
Sixty-six percent of Americans are worried about global warming. Among moms, that number is even higher.
“We know that climate change is a threat to all people, and in particular our kids,” says Melissa Burt.
Burt has a young daughter and she’s a climate scientist at Colorado State University. She says that although many moms are worried about global warming, many do not feel equipped to take action.
“They don’t have the resources to understand the climate issue completely and aren’t sure what they can actually do to tackle it,” she says.
So Burt and a group of other women scientists teamed up to create a campaign called Science Moms.
If a Tree Talks in the Forest, Does It Make a Sound? Ecologist Suzanne Simard uncovers the hidden connections beneath the forest floor, Suzanne Simard, The Walrus, 5/4/21
As the miniature crowns of the seedlings spawned new needles, they would feed the mycelium with their own photosynthetic sugars so the fungus could travel to even more distant pores. Once on solid footing, life running smoothly, the growing root could then support a fungal mantle—a coating—as though donning a jacket of mycelium from which even more fledgling hyphae could grow into the soil. The thicker the mantle and the greater the number of fungal threads the root could feed, the more extensively the mycelium could laminate the soil minerals and the more nutrients it could acquire from the grains and transport back to the root in trade. Root begets fungus begets root begets fungus, the partners keeping a positive feedback loop until a tree is made and a cubic foot of soil is packed with a hundred miles of mycelium. A web of life like our own cardiovascular system of arteries, veins, and capillaries.
Nocturnal dinosaurs: Night vision and superb hearing in a small theropod suggest it was a moonlight predator, Lars Schmitz, Jonah Choiniere, Roger Benson, The Conversation, 5/6/21
Using scans of fossilized dinosaur skulls, in a paper published in the journal Science on May 6, 2021, we describe the most convincing evidence to date for nocturnal dinosaurs. Two fossil species – Haplocheirus sollers and Shuvuuia deserti – likely had extremely good night vision. But our work also shows that S. deserti also had incredibly sensitive hearing similar to modern-day owls. This is the first time these two traits have been found in the same fossil, suggesting that this small, desert-dwelling dinosaur that lived in ancient Mongolia was probably a specialized night-hunter of insects and small mammals.
How melting glaciers have accelerated a shift in Earth’s axis: The redistribution of water has caused the planet to lean and wobble, resulting in the poles moving, Jeremy Plester, The Guardian, 5/6/21
The axis of the Earth has shifted and moved the locations of the north and south poles. The poles have always wandered very gradually on the globe but in 1995 the north pole turned away from Canada towards Russia and accelerated over the next 15 years, 17 times faster than the previous 15 years.
The distribution of water over the planet is a big driving force behind this shift, by changing the way mass is distributed around the world. The Earth spins around on its axis like a spinning top, and if its weight is shifted around on the globe it starts to lean and wobble, changing the axis and poles.
The pandemic continues….
'Far more likely' coronavirus came from lab, ex-MI6 chief tells LBC: Coronavirus was more likely to have escaped from a lab than to have come from an animal, the former head of MI6 has told LBC, Will Taylor, LBC, 5/2/21
Sir Richard Dearlove said aspects of the virus "point in the direction of it being somewhat tailored" though he warned this may never be proven.
The former "C" of the Secret Intelligence Service – equivalent to "M" in James Bond – also told LBC's Tom Swarbrick that more information on the coronavirus' origin will soon come out.
Some have theorised the coronavirus could have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Work to establish the origin of the virus is ongoing.
Sir Richard, who headed up the spy agency between 1999 and 2004, told Tom the World Health Organisation's report, which said a lab leak was highly unlikely but further work was needed, was a "farcical investigation".
While he admitted "it's possible" the virus jumped to humans from nature, Sir Richard said: "But the fact that... it's far more likely, if you're a scientist, that it was put together.
"All right, put it like this… It's a natural virus that's been, as it were, mucked around with and the characteristics of things like the spike protein, which make it so highly infectious, also point in the direction of it being somewhat tailored."
Auto Makers Retreat From 50 Years of ‘Just in Time’ Manufacturing: Pressured by pandemic, the hyperefficient supply-chain model pioneered by Toyota is under assault, Sean McLain, Wall Street Journal, 5/3/21
The hyperefficient auto supply chain symbolized by the words “just in time” is undergoing its biggest transformation in more than half a century, accelerated by the troubles car makers have suffered during the pandemic. After sudden swings in demand, freak weather and a series of accidents, they are reassessing their basic assumption that they could always get the parts they needed when they needed them.
“The just-in-time model is designed for supply-chain efficiencies and economies of scale,” said Ashwani Gupta, Nissan Motor Co.’s chief operating officer. “The repercussions of an unprecedented crisis like Covid highlight the fragility of our supply-chain model.”
The novel coronavirus' spike protein plays additional key role in illness: Salk researchers and collaborators show how the protein damages cells, confirming COVID-19 as a primarily vascular disease, Salk Institute, Eurekalert, 4/30/21
While the findings themselves aren't entirely a surprise, the paper provides clear confirmation and a detailed explanation of the mechanism through which the protein damages vascular cells for the first time. There's been a growing consensus that SARS-CoV-2 affects the vascular system, but exactly how it did so was not understood. Similarly, scientists studying other coronaviruses have long suspected that the spike protein contributed to damaging vascular endothelial cells, but this is the first time the process has been documented.
Birds Birds Birds
He Wasn’t a Bird Person. Then a Hawk Built a Nest on His Fire Escape: Life, death, renewal and social media ensued, John Leland, NY Times, 5/7/21
Mr. Palma Mir was not a bird person. But the appearance of a wild raptor, in the middle of the pandemic, was proof of life in a neighborhood that has had some of the city’s highest rates of infection and death.
A few days after his first sighting, he heard tapping outside the window and figured it was a contractor working on the building. But when he drew the curtains, he noticed parts of the screen torn away and scattered on the fire escape. Sticks were piled in a heap. Once he looked out and saw the hawk returning to the nest with a stick.
He did what any enterprising New Yorker would: He posted pictures on Instagram and Facebook, and he named the bird Billy.
This Producer's Joyful Bird Beats Are Wowing TikTok: So Wylie learned last year that owl calls are "kind of fire." Now she is expanding her catchy avian collection,Asher Elbein, Audubon, 4/16/21
NY-based music producer So Wylie … composed a minute-long beat and posted a video of it on TikTok, thinking of it as a fun one-off project. But the online response was so enthusiastic that Wylie has kept at it. Now, her bird beat videos—featuring avian stars such as the Barred Owl,Hermit Thrush, and Common Potoo—have garnered an enthusiastic and growing fan base of birders.
‘They’re chilling’: endangered condors take up residence outside California woman’s home: More than 15 rare birds, whose population is at about 160 in the state, showed up at Cinda Mickol’s home – and they’ve made a mess, Kari Paul, The Guardian, 5/6/21
Giant California condors are rare – but not at Cinda Mickols’ home.
More than 15 condors, an endangered bird whose population hovers at around 160 in the state and under 500 in the US, have recently taken a liking to Mickol’s house in Tehachapi – and they’ve made quite a mess.
William Blake says: Everything that Lives is Holy
Long live the Child
Long live the Mother and Father
Long live the People
Long live this wounded Planet
Long live the good milk of the Air
Long live the spawning Rivers and the
mothering Oceans
Long live the juice of the Grass
and all the determined greenery of the Globe
Long live the Elephants and the Sea Horses,
the Humming-Birds and the Gorillas,
the Dogs and Cats and Field-Mice
all the surviving Animals
our innocent Sisters and Brothers
Long live the Earth, deeper than all our thinking
we have done enough killing
Long live the Man
Long live the Woman
Who use both courage and compassion
Long live their Children
—Adrian Mitchell, from The Shadow Knows - Poems 2000-2003 (Bloodaxe, 2004), copyright © Adrian Mitchell 2004
RATATATAT: Quick Hits (Lawyers, Guns & Money)
Streams and lakes have rights, a US county decided. Now they’re suing Florida: A novel lawsuit is taking advantage of a local ‘rights of nature’ measure passed in November in effort to protect wetlands, Isabella Kaminski, The Guardian, 5/1/21
Plaintiff Files Motion to Consolidate Paraquat Lawsuits in California, Roopal Luhana, New York Injury Law News, 4/29/21
COURT RULES THAT EPA’S DELAY “EXPOSED A GENERATION OF AMERICAN CHILDREN” TO BRAIN-DAMAGING PESTICIDE CHLORPYRIFOS: The ruling represents a stark repudiation of the Trump EPA’s refusal to ban chlorpyrifos, Sharon Lerner, The Intercept, 4/29/21
DOJ THREATENED MIT RESEARCHERS WITH SUBPOENA IN COLLABORATION WITH BOLIVIAN COUP REGIME: Emails to the analysts show the Trump administration’s complicity with a Bolivian criminal investigation, Ken Klippenstein, Ryan Grim, The Intercept, 5/4/21
The U.S. Owes Hawaiians Millions of Dollars Worth of Land. Congress Helped Make Sure the Debt Wasn’t Paid: In a 1995 law, the U.S. promised to pay its land debt to Hawaiians, thousands of whom are waiting for homes. But Congress, including the state’s own delegation, voted to give the land to other parties, Rob Perez, Propublica, 5/7/21
‘The middle of a massive contamination’: Residents of Wisconsin region struggle with aftereffects of dangerous ‘forever chemicals’ Four years after a facility disclosed water contamination in the surrounding community, residents and locals deal with the impact of PFAS, John McCracken, InvestigateMidwest.org, 4/29/21
Fertility & Environmental Justice: A conversation with Shanna Swan and Annie Hoang:"These toxics chemicals are affecting you—not just the polar bears, the insects, and the birds."EHN Staff, Environmental Health News, 5/2/21
Tyson Foods’ expansion in west Tennessee is pitting longtime farmers against one of the nation’s biggest protein suppliers: Aided by GOP legislation, the proliferation of factory farms is making parts of West Tennessee 'uninhabitable' for residents, Anita Wadhwani, TennesseeLookout.com, 5/2/21
As Extreme Weather Batters America’s Farm Country, Costing Billions, Banks Ignore the Financial Risks of Climate Change: The effects on agriculture of more frequent and intense natural disasters could overwhelm lenders, destabilize the food supply and disrupt the global economy, Georgina Guston, Inside Climate News, 5/2/21
Chinese greenhouse gas emissions now larger than those of developed countries combined: China now accounts for 27 percent of global emissions, while the U.S. accounts for 11 percent,Steven Mufson and Brady Dennis, Washington Post, 5/6/21
New tool called ‘Vulcan’ could help cities better estimate their carbon dioxide emissions: It relies on data about pollution from power plants, factories, buildings, and vehicles across the U.S., YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 5/6/21
Warren Buffett sinks climate measure, says world will adapt, Corbin Hiar, E&E News, 5/3/21
Facebook is ‘not a researchers-friendly space’ say academics encountering roadblocks to analyzing its 2020 election ad data,Kate Kaye, Digiday, 5/4/21
Driftwood could be recycled into cleaner electric car batteries, Bas Den Hond, New Scientist, 4/30/21
Food dyes linked to attention and activity problems in children "Most consumers have no idea that something that is allowed in the food supply by the FDA could trigger adverse behaviors,” Nate Seltenrich, Environmental Health News, 5/3/21
Writing to Heal: The Millions Interviews Elissa Washuta, David Grandouiller, The Millions, 4/28/21
I did that by becoming a powerful witch. I’m being flip, but really, I think the process of writing the book was incredibly empowering, and increasingly so as it went along, because the most ambitious and technically challenging work came at the end of the drafting process. I believe I understood, at the end of it, what’s behind that whole thing about having to love oneself before being able to be in love with someone else. I had understood it to mean that a person wasn’t lovable or worthy until that point. But now I understand that, for me, it meant that I wasn’t fully open to accepting interest and affection I thought I didn’t deserve. So I got out of that by developing self-worth as part of the ongoing process of getting and staying sober, and through writing a book I’m immensely proud of.
(Elissa Washuta’s new book is White Magic.)
NEW DOCUMENTARY “EXTERMINATE ALL THE BRUTES” WAS 500 YEARS OF GENOCIDE IN THE MAKING: The fact that Raoul Peck’s new HBO film on white supremacy exists shows that something profound about the world is changing, Jon Schwarz, The Intercept, 5/2/21
In the final episode of Raoul Peck’s HBO documentary, “Exterminate All the Brutes,” Peck says in a voice-over, “The very existence of this film is a miracle.”
That is 100 percent true. Before this moment in history, it would have been impossible to imagine that one of the world’s largest corporations — AT&T, owner of HBO, with a current market cap of $220 billion — would have funded and broadcast a film like this. The fact that it somehow squeezed through the cracks and onto our TVs and laptop screens demonstrates that something profound about the world is changing. Decades, centuries of people fighting and dying were required both to widen the cracks and mold someone like Peck, the right human at the right time, to step through.
“Exterminate All the Brutes” is a sprawling disquisition — four episodes, each an hour long —into the invention and consequences of 500 years of “white” supremacy, presented via a high-gloss pastiche of old footage, newly filmed dramatizations, and clips from Hollywood movies.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo articulated today what many have been reluctant to say: What is at stake in the Big Lie and all the Republican efforts to keep it in play—the shenanigans in the secret Maricopa County, Arizona, recount; the censuring of Republicans who voted to impeach the former president; the expected removal of Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney from a leadership role in the party; and so on—is not the past election of 2020, but the upcoming election of 2024 — Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 5/7/21
Today is Mother’s Day. I am ambivalent about any and all manufactured holidays and celebrations. Honoring the Mother is an ancient human practice. The Phrygians held a festival for Cybele, the “Great Mother of the Gods.” The Dine´ people have long practiced a Mother Blessing, the Lakota honor White Buffalo Woman, and there are other similar practices in almost every culture. In America, Anna Jarvis originated Mother’s Day in 1907 by honoring her mother’s passing, and within five years it had taken hold as a national event. Ironically, as the day became associated with sending cards and giving gifts, Ms. Jarvis spent much of her life trying to abolish the commercialized holiday she had originated.
My mother would be a falconress,
and I her gerfalcon raised at her will,
from her wrist sent flying, as if I were her own
pride, as if her pride
knew no limits, as if her mind
sought in me flight beyond the horizon.
—Robert Duncan, from “My Mother Would be a Falconress”
40 Years Ago, Poet Lucille Clifton Lost Her House. This Year, Her Children Bought It Back. Celebrated poet Lucille Clifton created a vibrant home that served as a base for activists. She lost the house to foreclosure, but now, her children hope to bring it to life again, Marina Magloire, Harper’s Bazaar, 5/6/21
Lucille would joke that her poems were so short because she had six kids. Indeed, Lucille is a master of the epigram. Many of her best-loved poems (such as “won’t you celebrate with me,” “why some people be mad at me sometimes,” and “homage to my hair”) pack more emotional resonance into fewer lines than many novels achieve in hundreds of pages. Audre Lorde, also a mother and a poet, has argued, “Of all the art forms, poetry is the most economical […] the one which can be done between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the subway, and on scraps of surplus paper.”
if i am ever less than a mountain
for your definite brothers and sisters
let the rivers pour over my head
let the sea take me for a spiller
of seas let black men call me stranger
always for your never named sake
—Lucille Clifton, from “The Lost Baby Poem,” in good woman: poems and a memoir, BOA Editions
Be well all, stay engaged — there is much work yet to be done.