The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 141, January 22, 2023 (V3 #36)
The hallmark of the modern Republican Party is its shamelessness. You can be many things and still be a Republican — in favor of free trade or opposed; pro-Ukraine or pro-Putin; even in favor of climate change legislation or against. However, you must not feel shame. You cannot admit mistakes. Hypocrisy is a virtue, not a vice. Most of all, never admit defeat.—Marc Elias, Democracy Docket
I am struck today by how language—its silences, obfuscations, truths, lies, and hopes—shapes our world.—Heather Cox Richardson
Beyond the glass, the wintry city
creaks like an ancient wooden bridge.
A great wind rushes under all of us.
The bigger the window, the more it trembles.
—from “In January,” Ted Kooser
Politicks
FBI’s opposition to releasing Leonard Peltier driven by vendetta, says ex-agent: Exclusive: retired FBI agent Coleen Rowley calls for clemency for Indigenous activist who has been in prison for nearly 50 years, Nina Lakhani, The Guardian, 1/18/23
There’s Only One Thing to Call Biden’s New Scandal: Political Malpractice: And that’s assuming things don’t get worse, Susan B. Glasser, New Yorker, 1/19/23
Getting down and dirty with the debt ceiling, Lucian K. Truscott IV, Newsletter, 1/19/23: “…the only thing you need to remember as this clusterfuck over the deficit plays itself out is this: it’s both parties’ responsibility, but it’s the Republicans’ fault.”
Ron DeSantis and his lethal lies, Lucian K. Truscott IV, Newsletter, 1.18.23: “Nearly seven and a half million Floridians have come down with COVID since early in 2020. 84,176 of them have died from the disease. But you wouldn’t know that listening to DeSantis.”
Victimhood and Vengeance: How did the Christian nationalist influence on American democracy escape the notice of so many? Linda Greenhouse, NY Review of Books, 2/9/23 issue: “Most of Christianity’s symbolic capital has been seized by a segment of the population committed to ideas about the Bible, the family, and civics that most other Americans reject.”
How Evangelicals Learned to Stop Worrying......and love the culture wars, Mark Alan Smith, Persuasion, 1/16/23: “God picked David—a liar and adulterer—to be the Israelites' king, and the Israelites played their divine role by rallying around him. The parallel to Trump’s candidacy and then presidency was obvious.”
The true priorities of the global elite, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 1/18/23: “As CEOs and billionaires at WEF preached the gospel of "stakeholder capitalism," the ultra-wealthy have captured the vast majority of new wealth. This has been achieved by holding down worker wages, slashing corporate taxes, and obstructing environmental regulations.”
All the Data Apple Collects About You—and How to Limit It: Cupertino puts privacy first in a lot of its products. But the company still gathers a bunch of your information, Matt Burgess, Wired, 1/16/23
How Cell Phone Spyware Threatens Privacy and Democracy: Why We Need to Expose the Pegasus Project, Rachel Maddow, LitHub, 1/19/23: “If this antidemocratic, authoritarian nightmare can’t be safely reported upon, it won’t be understood.” Book: Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy by Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud.
Laws restricting drag shows should scare everyone who believes in free expression, Kate Ruane, Jonathan Friedman, Samantha LaFrance, Julie Trébault, PEN America, 1/19/23
How an Illicit Cell Phone Helped Me Take College Courses from Prison: “I didn’t want to give any type of indication that I am in prison, because I didn’t want to be kicked out,” Anonymous as told to Charlotte West, The Marshall Project, 1/20/23
Are We Seeing the Last Gasp of the GOP’s Two Santa Claus Scam? Has the American public finally wised up to Wanniski’s and Reagan’s Two Santas scam, even if they don’t know the details or the backstory? Thom Hartmann, The Hartmann Report, 1/21/23
The GOP's bogus war with corporate America, Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, Popular Information, 1/17/23: “McCarthy is not at war with corporate America. His political operation is fueled by corporate America's paid representatives.”
Turning the Debt Ceiling Crisis Against McCarthy’s Republicans: Biden needs to play serious hardball, or he will get rolled, Robert Kuttner, American Prospect, 1/17/23
Forgive me for not writing sober,
I mean sooner, but I almost don’t
dare see what I write, I keep mating mistakes,
I mean making, and I’m wandering
if I’ve inherited what
my father’s got.
—from “Last Words,” Mary Jo Salter
Books and Culture
David Crosby, who embodied the Woodstock generation, dies at 81, Matt Schudel, Washington Post, 1/19/23
Carry me, carry me
Carry me above the world
Carry me, carry me
Carry me above the world.
—from “Carry Me,” David Crosby
Good Evening, We Are from Ukraine: The Subversive Radicalism of a Viral Wartime Slogan, Maria Sonevytsky, LA Review of Books, 1/17/23: “this phrase, which began as a musician’s offhand stage banter sampled into an EDM anthem, became a slogan invoked by Ukrainian politicians, soldiers, intellectuals, keyboard warriors, and their supporters around the globe.”
Burnt: If You’re Fried, You’re Not Alone, Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, The Newsletter with ECM, 1/21/23: “And the idea that we all deserve to rest, that we all deserve to care for ourselves and one another, is a principle of democracy that should not be denied. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s right there.”
‘Better than finding gold’: towers’ remains may rewrite history of English civil war: Archaeologists say finding medieval gatehouse at Coleshill was ‘real shock’ and ‘highlight of our careers,’ Esther Addley, The Guardian, 1/21/23
North Dakota Could Jail Librarians Who Don’t Comply with Anti-LGBTQ+ Book Bans: A proposed bill is the latest in a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ laws aimed at public libraries, James Factora, Them, 1/19/23
How do you say the word ‘sun’ in Cree? It starts with learning respect: The loss of Indigenous languages is the result of colonization. What role should non-Natives play in their revitalization? Anna East, Michelle Mitchell, The Guardian, 1/17/23
The Mimic: How will ChatGPT change everyday life? Sarah Myers West on artificial intelligence and human resilience, Graham Vyse, The Signal, 1/17/23: “AI, as a field, has become increasingly dependent on the resources of a small number of big tech companies that have built or acquired these two things: huge data sets and huge computational power.” Ed. Note: this is not good news for any of us so-called “private” citizens.
‘This song sucks’: Nick Cave responds to ChatGPT song written in style of Nick Cave: Singer-songwriter dissects lyrics produced by popular chatbot, saying it is ‘a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human,’ Sian Cain, The Guardian, 1/16/23
How Kathy Acker Stayed Radical: Not many people bought her books, but nearly everyone who did wrote their own, Laura Tanenbaum, The New Republic, 1/13/23
5 Reasons Why “My Generation” Is So Awesome, Adam Leadbeater, CultureSonar, 1/19/23: “The Who’s debut single sounds as exciting, unique, and fabulously frenzied as the day it first struck the ears of mid-60s teens.”
Satyrs and Poets and Jazzmen and Muses: Anne Waldman on Life at Bennington in the Early 1960s: “I was competitive with men. I wanted their freedom,” Anne Waldman, Lithub, 1/18/23: “What were my rites of passage, my rituals? Envying the freedom of the male protagonist, the male poet, I was still a daughter yet carried a lot of male energy.” Book: Bard Kinetic
You fluctuate in an artful body
You try to imitate the world’s glory
Art begins with a lie
That’s the story, sharp speck in the eye.
—from “The Lie,” Anne Waldman
Environment and Science
Atmospheric dust may have hidden true extent of global heating: Material from dry landscapes has surged since the 1800s, possibly helping to cool the planet for decades, Maanvi Singh, The Guardian, 1/17/23: “Atmospheric dust has increased by about 55% since the mid-1800s, an analysis suggests. And that increasing dust may have hidden up to 8% of warming from carbon emissions.”
When scientists tagged a curious seal, he led them to signs of a potential climate disaster, Chris Mooney, Washington Post, 1/20/23: “The ocean is delivering its heat, and now we need to ask the question, what is that heat going to do in the interior?” (Ed. Note: guessing that doomsday sounding articles like this one may turn you away, but this article is worth reading in full.)
New Study Finds ‘Surprising’ Warming Spike Atop the Greenland Ice Sheet: One of the planet’s refrigerators is defrosting, leading to melting events that could raise sea levels 20 inches by the end of the century, Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News, 1/18/23
Salt Marsh Microbes Threaten to Reshape the Atmosphere: Turf wars between microbes dictate how much carbon salt marshes store and how much methane they pump into the air, Christian Elliott, Hakai, 1/18/23
Lost for words: fears of ‘catastrophic’ language loss due to rising seas: Climate crisis could be the ‘nail in the coffin’ for half of languages spoken by the end of the century, say linguists, as coastal communities are forced to migrate, Karen McVeigh, The Guardian, 1/16/23
Honey bees are not in peril. These bees are: Want to save the bees? First, throw out most of what you know about them, Benji Jones, Vox, 1/19/23: “From a conservationist’s point of view, native bees are the ones in more dire need of support.”
Concentrated sunlight puts cheap solar hydrogen within reach: Engineers have made a device one-hundredth the size of previous solar-to-hydrogen devices that is over three times more efficient, Prachi Patel, Anthropocene, 1/19/23
Are cows at sea the future of farming? A high-tech micro-dairy called Floating Farm in Rotterdam is helping rethink agriculture in the age of climate crisis, Matthew Kronsberg, The Guardian, 1/16/23
Researchers study how to help forests thrive in a warmer climate: At a clear-cut area in Washington state, they planted 14,000 trees adapted to warmer conditions. The researchers are sharing lessons learned with others, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 1/18/23
Renewables Projected to Soon Be One-Fourth of US Electricity Generation. Really Soon: The latest EIA report shows renewable generation is about to cross the 25 percent mark, while coal and natural gas lose ground, Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News, 1/19/23
An Accidental Discovery at an Israeli Lab May Solve the Global Sugar Problem: A Galilee entrepreneur hoped to achieve a modest goal: to make fish oil a tasty food additive for children. But along the way he came up with a revolutionary method to treat sugar – making it possible to use only a fraction of the amount usually found in processed food, Meirev Moran, Haaretz, 1/13/23
Hydrogen-powered planes take off with startup’s test flight: The plane is the largest to fly powered in part by a hydrogen fuel cell, a significant step for zero-emissions flight, Casey Crownhart, MIT Technology Review, 1/19/23
Tripping for the Planet: Psychedelics and Climate Activism, Amber X. Chen, Atmos, 1/16/23: “While it is now widely accepted that psychedelics have therapeutic potential, there is also a growing popularity in the idea that psychedelics could act as a powerful aid to social movements, particularly environmentalism.”
Standard Model of Cosmology Survives a Telescope’s Surprising Finds: Reports that the James Webb Space Telescope killed the reigning cosmological model turn out to have been exaggerated. But astronomers still have much to learn from distant galaxies glimpsed by Webb, Rebecca Boyle, Quanta, 1/20/23
Are we entering the golden age of geothermal energy? Despite its advantages, geothermal energy has seen limited use compared to fossil fuels. Find out how this renewable source is gaining ground and what benefits it offers, Gero Rueter, DW, 1/4/23: “One rising star in stationary storage is iron…”
How old batteries will help power tomorrow’s EVs: Recycling lithium-ion batteries is taking off thanks to companies like Redwood Materials and could help the transition to renewable energy, Casey Crownhart, MIT Technology Review, 1/17/23
In the Amazon, Indigenous and Locally Controlled Land Stores Carbon, but the Rest of the Rainforest Emits Greenhouse Gases: New research shows that incursions by resource extractors often cause territories to emit more than they store, Bob Berwyn, Katie Surma, Inside Climate News, 1/16/23
A small neighbourhood in Toronto has built a program to help residents reduce their household emissions. Could their grassroots approach become a template for the rest of the country? Andre Mayer, CBC, 1/16/23
Seeds developed over thousands of years may help farmers adapt to climate change, Ruth Sherlock, Prairie Public, 1/18/23
The sky is clearing and the night has cried enough
The sun, he comes, the world to soften up
Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice but to carry on
—from “Carry On,” Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, written by Stephen Stills
Birds
Climate Change Threatens Songbird Breeding, Kat Kerlin, Futurity, 1/18/23: “…it appears the effects of climate change in California’s Central Valley—and in Mediterranean systems globally—are likely to have broad and mostly negative impacts on cavity-nesting songbird reproduction.”
Dawn Chorus: The Traveling Birder at the End of the World, IaniusX, DailyKos, 1/15/23: Tierra del Fuego!
Hidden, never-before-seen penguin colony spotted from space, Tom Metcalfe, LiveScience, 1/20/23: “The colony is estimated to be home to about 1,000 adult birds, in 500 pairs with their young, which makes it relatively small for an emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) breeding site. But it's an important addition to what's known of the species.”
Watch This! Woodland Pattern’s 29th Annual Poetry Marathon & Benefit is Sat. & Sun., January 28th & 29th, 2023 | 10 am-10 pm CT – Saturday 7 pm-7:30 pm: CITY POINT PRESS (CURATED BY DAVID WILK)—Barbara Henning. Dale Herd, E. Ethelbert Miller, Maureen Owen, David Wilk, Sponsored by City Point Press.
There are quite a few literary birthdays to celebrate this week: Howard Moss (22nd), Louis Zukofsky and Edith Wharton (23rd), Virginia Woolf and Gloria Naylor (24th), Jules Feiffer (26th), Lewis Carroll and Julius Lester (27th), Colette (28th).
Winter is in full swing but now the days are growing longer and spring is at least imaginably on the horizon. I hope this week’s collection of stories will be useful. And there are quite a few here that should be enlightening and dare I say, even hopeful.
Stay well all, be safe. Much love — David
I don’t know how to do it: hold their faces in my hands and tell them what’s waiting. How to teach any of us to follow this song, into what dark.—from “How to Let Go of the World,” Franny Choi