The Weird Times

Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces

The Weird Times: Issue 117, August 7, 2022 (V3 #13)

Cartwheel Galaxy—NASA

“White people were, and are, astounded by the holocaust in Germany. They did not know that they could act that way,” Baldwin wrote. “But I very much doubt whether black people were astounded—at least, in the same way.”—James Baldwin

“…as long as some among us are oppressed—and we are part of that oppression—it must blunt our faith and sap the strength of our high purpose.”—Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1965

“Though the vote in Kansas is cause for celebration, the answer to how much it matters will come in November, when voters in all 50 states go to the polls and are faced with a reality that has been there all along: It’s not just about who you’re voting for, it’s about what they stand for.”—Lucian K. Truscott IV

Books and Culture

'The road down authoritarianism': What Ken Burns’ Holocaust documentary can teach Americans in 2022, Alex Henderson, Alternet, 7/31/22: “We're not unmindful that, as Mark Twain says: 'History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.’ As the film progressed through the last six or seven years, we began to realize just how terrifyingly rhyming these stories and moments and individuals and actions were with our present moment.”

How the Media Polarized Us: The shift from ad revenue to the pursuit of digital subscriptions has turned journalism into post-journalism, Andrey Mir, City Journal, Summer 2022: “The transition of news coverage and public discussions from legacy media to social media invited politicization.”

Bill Russell Was Basketball’s Adam: The N.B.A. star’s litany of accomplishments, on and off the court, has a mythic quality, Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, 8/1/22: “The cost and the substance of his greatness was total awareness, an impossible density of movement and thought.”

Iconic broadcaster Vin Scully was baseball’s merry poet laureate and so much more, Gabriel Baumgaertner, The Guardian, 8/4/22: “Vin Scully, the LA Dodgers broadcaster of nearly seven decades who died on Tuesday at 94, leaves behind a towering legacy as a paragon of joy in a world of anger and calm in a time of chaos.” Listen: Scully on Madison Bumgarner, his wife and a snake, 4/16/16

The Age of Dominion: Where does religion fit into the Anthropocene? John Biewen, Orion, Summer, 2022: “The question—the only question, really—is whether enough of us can mobilize, now, to force the dramatic societal change required to save ourselves.”

Don’t Call Them Trash: Romance novels celebrate female pleasure and aspiration, Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 8/4/22: “…the revolutionary potential inherent in women expressing and exploring what they really want.”

Ukraine’s Literary Identity: The editor discusses publishing books in a time of war and working to preserve the Ukrainian language, Anna Sergeeva, Olena Rybka, Guernica, 8/2/22: “even as the war continues, so does creative work.”

Prejudice Rules: LRB contributors on the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Elif Batuman, Edna Bonhomme, Hazel V. Carby, Linda Colley, Meehan Crist, Anne Enright, Lorna Finlayson, Lisa Hallgarten and Jayne Kavanagh, Sophie Lewis, Maureen N. McLane, Erin Maglaque, Gazelle Mba, Azadeh Moaveni, Toril Moi, Joanne O’Leary, Niela Orr, Lauren Oyler, Susan Pedersen, Jacqueline Rose, Madeleine Schwartz, Arianne Shahvisi, Sophie Smith, Rebecca Solnit, Alice Spawls, Amia Srinivasan, Chaohua Wang, Marina Warner, Bee Wilson, Emily Witt, London Review of Books, July 2022

A Gathering of Stones: on the Earth’s Best Secret-Keepers: “I felt a kinship with the stones,” Aimee Bender, LitHub, 8/1/22: “Things whispered to them, deep from the earth, secrets of the earth itself.”

Author Michael Pollan, with eye on Oregon’s psilocybin rollout, talks about plant-derived drugs, Sage Van Wing, OPB, 7/28/22

A fresh look at Ruth Asawa’s extraordinary life, (book review), Reagan Upshaw, Washington Post, 8/5/22: Ruth Asawa: Citizen of the Universe. “I think that every minute we’re attached to the earth, we should be doing something.”

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From the Sustaining Air

from the sustaining air

fresh air

There is the clarity of a shore

And shadow,   mostly,   brilliance

summer

                the billows of August

When, wandering, I look from my page

I say nothing

      when asked

I am, finally, an incompetent, after all

—Larry Eigner (born August 7, 1926), from The Collected Poems

Environment and Science

In Nebraska, Bighorn Sheep Reclaim Their Former High Plains Home: In “High Plains Wild” —filmmaker Mariah Lundgren tells the story of efforts by wildlife biologists, conservationists, and landowners to reintroduce and sustain the magnificent bighorn sheep in Nebraska, Yale Environment 360, 8/1/22

This company is turning heaps of plastic trash into construction building blocks, Parija Kavilanz, WDSU, 8/4/22

How whisky waste could fuel cars: A new production plant in Scotland is expected to convert whisky byproducts into butanol, which can be used in cars, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 8/5/22

History of DDT ocean dumping off L.A. coast even worse than expected, EPA finds, Rosanna Xia, LA Times, 8/4/22

The West’s forever fire season: How climate change makes wildfire more likely to happen all year round, Jonathan Thompson, High Country News, 8/1/22

How year-round crops could reduce farm pollution in the Mississippi River, Chloe Johnson, Investigate Midwest, 8/2/22

Your Yard Could Be a Wildlife Sanctuary: Lawns are America’s biggest irrigated crop: Converting some of them into natural habitats could do wonders for Earth’s biodiversity, Stephanie Castellano, Reasons to be Cheerful, 7/29/22

Some Californians are ripping out their lawns as the state’s drought continues to worsen, Randol White, Jefferson Public Radio, 8/1/22

Nearly 60 percent of energy production in Iowa comes from wind turbines, Monica Cordero, Investigate Midwest, 8/3/22

Behold the Cartwheel Galaxy! NASA showcases another dazzling James Webb image: NASA says the new image offers 'a snapshot of the galaxy’s current state, but also a peek into its past and future,’ Chris Young, Interesting Engineering, 8/2/22

At Long Last, Mathematical Proof That Black Holes Are Stable: The solutions to Einstein’s equations that describe a spinning black hole won’t blow up, even when poked or prodded, Steve Nadis, Quanta, 8/4/22

Long COVID-19 and other chronic respiratory conditions after viral infections may stem from an overactive immune response in the lungs, Harish Narasimhan, The Conversation, 8/4/22

The Origins of Covid-19 Are More Complicated Than Once Thought: Scientists used painstaking research, genomics, and clever statistics to definitively track two distinct strains of the virus back to a wet market in Wuhan, Amit Katwala, Wired, 8/4/22

Cell by cell, scientists are building a high-resolution map of brain changes in Alzheimer’s disease: A massive dataset of 1.2M brain cells shines a light on disease’s cellular roots, Rachel Tompa, Allen Institute, 7/28/22

What Did the Ancient Whale See?: Reconstructing the visual proteins from whales’ early ancestors suggests they were deep-sea divers. The clever technique could help scientists understand the capabilities of other extinct species, Jason P. Dinh, Hakai, 8/4/22

Discovered in the deep: the snail with iron armour, Helen Scales, The Guardian, 8/3/22: “It looks like an armoured knight crawling around on the deep-sea floor.”

Tonga's volcano sent tons of water into the stratosphere. That could warm the Earth, Bill Chappell, NPR, 8/3/22: “The Jan. 15 eruption emphatically disrupted annual water patterns in the stratosphere (which also holds most of the atmosphere's ozone).”

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Shorter American Memory of the Declaration of Independence

We holler these trysts to be self-exiled that all manatees are credited equi-distant, that they are endured by their Creditor with cervical unanswerable rims. that among these are lightning, lice, and the pushcart of harakiri. That to seduce these rims, graces are insulated among manatees, descanting their juvenile pragmatism from the consistency of the graced. That whenever any formula of grace becomes detained of these endives, it is the rim of the peppery to aluminize or to abominate it. and to insulate Newtonian grace. leaching its fountain pen on such printed matter and orienting its pragmatism in such formula, as to them shall seize most lilac to effuse their sage and harakiri.

—Rosmarie Waldrop

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Politics, War

This summer may be one of the most consequential in US democracy: The Long Summer of 2022 began in May, when the abortion opinion draft leaked, and continued through a series of brutal rulings and congressional hearings, Thomas Zimmer, The Guardian, 8/1/22: “America will either overcome this reactionary counter-mobilization and make the leap to multiracial, pluralistic democracy – or the country will regress, and let democracy perish before it’s ever been fully achieved in this land.”

The Press is Already Working Overtime to Elect Trump Again: Negative media attention and the martyring effect of Internet censorship are the best friends Donald Trump ever had, but press antagonists are doubling down for 2024, Matt Taibbi, TK News, 8/4/22

State Legislatures Are Torching Democracy: Even in moderate places like Ohio, gerrymandering has let unchecked Republicans pass extremist laws that could never make it through Congress, Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, 8/6/22

How Six States Could Overturn the 2024 Election: The Supreme Court may let state legislatures decide the presidency, Barton Gellman, The Atlantic, 7/29/22

Western Massachusetts Challenges the U.S. Dollar: An idyllic New England county is getting its own digital money, with implications for local autonomy, Ben Shreckinger, Politico, 8/4/22: “The launch this spring of the Digital Berkshares cryptocurrency marks the latest step in a decades-long effort to foster a self-sufficient economy in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts…”

‘We look deeper’: the Native court settling cases outside the justice system: In South Dakota, the Oyate Court – made up of Lakota elders – uses traditional peacemaking principles to stress healing over punishment, Stewart Huntington, The Guardian, 8/6/22

“To the Stars, Through Struggle” Kansas, the Harbinger of Something Better, and a Sliver of Hope, Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, ECM Newsletter, 8/3/22: “Sometimes, in tiny unexpected moments, in the dusk of any given day, life is miraculous.”

Abortion bans violate religious freedom, clergy say in new legal campaign, Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post, 8/1/22: The new law sets “a pernicious elevation of the legal rights of fetuses while at the same time it devalues the quality of life and the health of the woman or girl who is pregnant. It is in direct conflict with Plaintiff’s clerical obligations and faith and imposes severe barriers and substantial burdens to their religious belief, speech and conduct.”

Paths to Depolarization: Grassroots activism and electoral reform are important. But only a political realignment can save America, Francis Fukuyama, Persuasion, 8/3/22

Companies: Stop hiding behind the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, Ryan Gellert (CEO of Patagonia), Linked In, 8/3/22: “If you talk about how your company is going to protect the planet, you need to pay your fair share to help scale solutions for things like clean power, transportation and manufacturing.”

Alex Jones Can’t Pretend His Way Out of This Reality: The Infowars host unsuccessfully tried to remain “in character” during a legal proceeding, Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 8/3/22: “the witness chair is a powerful tool in exposing Jones for what he really is: a reckless individual caught in a web of his own lies.”

Putin's rule is weakening: So what comes next? Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 7/30/22

Putin's Hitler moment: Winter on the steppes is coming for Vladimir the same way it came for Adolph, Lucian K. Truscott IV, Newsletter, 8/3/22: “No matter what you call your war, Mother Nature gets to have her say.”

Now is Not The Time to Let Putin Save Face: Why the West needs to keep supporting Ukraine, Cathy Young, Persuasion, 8/5/22

Birdland

Birds and dinosaurs — joined at the hip, Jim Shelton, Yale News, 7/27/22: “All baby birds have a moment prior to hatching when their hip bone is a tiny replica of a dinosaur’s pelvis.”

Wayward bird seen off the coast of Maine: The breeding range for the tufted puffin normally extends from northern California to Alaska, eastern Russia and northern Japan, and they are rarely seen in Maine, Dennis Hoey, Press Herald, 8/3/22

Why are some birds more intelligent than others?  Brain size is only part of the answer -- and time in the nest may be key, McGill Univ, Science Daily, 8/2/22

Geometric Analysis Reveals How Birds Mastered Flight: Partnerships between engineers and biologists have begun to reveal how birds evolved their superb maneuverability, Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta, 8/2/22

Climate change will severely impact birds by 2080, Erin Moody, Earth.com, 8/4/22: “…researchers analyzed 8,768 bird species to help them determine how many lineages might be lost or added regionally as birds move and adapt to a dynamic climate. They believe most losses will occur in tropical and subtropical areas but that community restructuring will take place worldwide.”

Plastic pollution: Birds all over the world are living in our rubbish, Victoria Gill, BBC, 8/4/22

In colorful avian world, hummingbirds rule, Bill Hathaway, Yale Today, 6/23/22: “The range of colors in the plumage of hummingbirds exceeds the color diversity of all other bird species in total…”

Caption: a.–f. Glenn Bartley; g. Wilmer Quiceno; h. John Cahill.)

'Cause someday we must return the movies in our brains

And these moments we can't fake

Yes, the angels never leak the expiration date

—from “Bathroom Light,” Mt. Joy, Matthew Quinn/Samuel Cooper

“The struggle was and still might be, to preserve some of the values that make life worth living. And they are still mousing around for significance in the chaos.” —Ezra Pound

“The main thing is this — when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.”—Grace Paley

Grace Paley had it right. Stay safe, keep your heart in your hands. Stay connected. Much love to all — David