The Weird Times

Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 143, February 5, 2023 (V3 #38)

Feb 05, 2023

Of one thing there is little doubt. Reading the great books -- whether Plato or Machiavelli, Ovid or Milton, Montaigne or Lady Murasaki, Augustine or Emily Dickinson , Aristiphanes or Swift -- will continue to trigger an intense response and may even lead us to the terrors and mysteries of the Abyss.—David Lehman

Books and Culture

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy. —Dorothy Parker

Henry Louis Gates Jr. on What Makes a “Classic” African American Text: “They reveal the human universal through the African American particular: All true art, all classics, do this,” Henry Louis Gates Jr., LitHub, 1/31/23: “So much of traditional African American literature, even fiction and poetry—ostensibly at least once removed from direct statement—was meant to deal a fatal blow to the dragon of racism.” Book: The Portable Anna Julia Cooper, edited by Shirley Moody-Turner

Great Books and the Abyss, David Lehman, Best American Poetry, 2/3/23: “Teachers used to give grades. Now they are expected to give all A’s, while students get to evaluate their instructors with anonymity and without risk. A topsy-turvy world: the world of deconstruction.”

It's not just 'Maus.' Here are some more targets of the rising tide of book-banning, Laura Clauson, Daily Kos, 2/5/23 (Ed: sadly, there are too many titles to list here!)

The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok: Or how, exactly, platforms die, Cory Doctorow, Wired, 1/23/23: “Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”

Going to Extremes: For Matisse art was a perpetual emergency, a matter of testing boundaries, breaking through, Jed Perl, NY Review of Books, 2/9/23 issue: “…he found radically different ways of exploring his sensations.”

Kelly Link in Praise of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Genuine Magic: “It is striking how resonant Le Guin’s work remains even as the future she describes recedes into our past,” Kelly Link, LitHub, 1/31/23

Gillian Anderson on why she is collecting sexual fantasies: ‘Women enjoy as rich an erotic life as men, Gillian Anderson, The Guardian, 2/1/23: “I want women across the world, and all of you who identify intrinsically as women now – queer, heterosexual and bisexual, non-binary, transgender, polyamorous – all of you, old and young, whatever your religion, and married, single or other, to write to me and tell me what you think about when you think about sex.”

S.E. Hinton Is Tired of Talking About ‘The Outsiders.’ No One Else Is: The author reflects on her classic 1967 novel, its 1983 film adaptation and its legacy today, Patrick Sauer, Smithsonian, 1/31/23: “It came out in 1967—Hinton’s freshman year at the University of Tulsa.”

Let's study Francis Bacon's The New Atlantis: And his Essays, Elle Griffin, The Novelleist, 2/3/23: “Unfortunately, he didn’t complete the draft before he died and it was published posthumously in 1626. As a result, the book is really more of an excerpt—it’s only 9,000 words…”

When she named her breakfast cafe Woke, a conservative backlash followed, Kyle Melnick, SFGate, 1/30/23: “When Carmen Quiroga named her new breakfast restaurant, she wanted people to associate the cafe with waking up in the morning.” Ed.: You can’t make this shit up.

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?

—from “Wait,” Galway Kinnell

Politics

The Trauma of 2016 (spy scandal, part 2): If we take the spy scandal seriously, we give ourselves a chance to heal, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 2/2/23: “ If we do not take this opportunity to reflect, we will deepen the trauma of that year, and ensure that is continues, through the institutions that we would like to trust, and down the generations whom we would like to spare the repetition of such terrible events.” (Ed. note: another very long piece that I urge you to read.)

"Ghostbuster" Bill Barr was the “Who Ya Gonna Call?” Guy for Three Treasonous GOP Presidents: Now we learn Barr apparently went so far as to cover up Trump’s involvement with Putin, providing opportunities for Trump to extort Ukraine and pass classified documents along to Russian Intelligence, Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 1/30/23

The media is blowing Biden’s documents ‘scandal’ out of proportion: The news media has greeted the supposed scandal of Biden’s mishandling of classified documents with breathless glee, Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian, 1/31/23 (the latest “her emails” story type.)

The NYT should tell readers whether it helped crooked FBI agents get Trump elected in 2016: The arrest of a high-level FBI agent on Russia-tied corruption charges raises stunning new questions about how Trump really won in 2016, Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/29/23

Ye olde Supreme Court? Your originalism is making America unsafe, Ruth Marcus, Washington Post, 2/4/23

Is SCOTUS About to Put Religion Over Civil Society? So here we are in 2023 and the real beliefs and plans of the Founding generation — slaveholders and abolitionsts alike — have dissolved into a blur of BS, Qanon, and fundamentalist religion, Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 2/1/23

The African American Studies AP Debacle: How DeSantis and the College Board enable each other’s corruption, Robert Kuttner, American Prospect, 2/3/23

Bullying Librarians Is for Know-Nothings: Why the GOP’s war on books is ripe for cancellation, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, The Nation, 1/31/23: “…if libraries are being attacked at the community level, that means they can be defended at the community level, too.”

Inside a US Neo-Nazi Homeschool Network With Thousands of Members: An Ohio couple has been unmasked as leaders of the neo-Nazi “Dissident Homeschool” Telegram channel that distributes lesson plans to 2,400 members, David Gilbert, Vice News, 1/29/23

Professionalize the police: An obvious major reform needs more attention than it's getting, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 1/29/23

Black police officers aren’t colorblind – they’re infected by the same anti-Black bias as American society and police in general, Rashad Shabazz, The Conversation, 1/30/23

Washington Post Editorial on the Tyre Nichols Murder Shows Liberal Reformers Are All Out of Ideas—Even Fake Ones: A phoned-in editorial shows that elite consensus makers aren’t even bothering to run through the motions of substantive reform, Adam Johnson, The Column, 1/31/23

Mass-market military drones have changed the way wars are fought: The war in Ukraine has exposed that widely available, inexpensive drones are being used not just for targeted killings but for wholesale slaughter, Kelsey D. Atherton, MIT Technology Review, 1/30/23

Ukraine intel chief predicted Russia’s war. He says Crimea will be retaken, Isabelle Khurshudyan, Washington Post, 1/31/23

The Escalation Lie, Lucian K. Truscott IV, Newsletter, 1/31/23. “It’s past time for American media to stop echoing Russian propaganda by calling our shipment of increasingly sophisticated and deadly weapons to Ukraine an escalation.”

You are now living through Cold War 2: A late push for re-engagement is not going to work, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 2/4/23: “If history is any guide, expect at least the next three decades to be defined by mutual U.S.-China distrust and tensions rather than re-engagement or cooperation against shared challenges.”

Lives of loud desperation, Lucian K. Truscott IV, Newsletter, 2/1/23: “They are our parents 50 years ago, our grandparents 100 years or even 200, or 300 or 400 years ago. In 10 years, or 20 years, they will be Americans, but even right now, right this minute, they are human beings and they are us.”

We’ve Lost the Plot: Our constant need for entertainment has blurred the line between fiction and reality—on television, in American politics, and in our everyday lives, Megan Garber, Atlantic, 1/30/23: “QAnon adherents live in a universe of fiction; they trust, above all, in the anonymous showrunner who is writing and directing and producing reality.”

Citizens’ assemblies: are they the future of democracy? A look at the surge in popularity of randomly selected councils that offer an alternative to politics as we know it, Eva Talmadge, The Guardian, 2/1/23: “Being in a room with people who you would probably not meet on a day-to-day basis – that in itself was fantastic.”

Do the five day grind once more
I know of nothin' else that bugs me
More than workin' for the rich man
Hey! I'll change that scene one day
Today I might be mad, tomorrow I'll be glad
'Cause I'll have Friday on my mind

—from “Friday on my Mind,” The Easybeats, by George Redburn Young/Harry Vanda

Environment and Science

Yale honors the work of a 9-year-old Black girl whose neighbor reported her to police, Vanessa Romo, NPR, 2/4/23: “She was collecting spotted lanternfly specimens. Her neighbor became frightened and called the cops.”

The Secret to Making Concrete That Lasts 1,000 Years: Scientists have uncovered the Roman recipe for self-repairing cement—which could massively reduce the carbon footprint of the material today, Jim Morrison, Wired, 2/3/23: “The people who made it were so brilliant, and so precise in what they did, that it has taken us 15 years of work to decipher much of this.” (Ed. note: of course now MIT holds the patent…)

An Even Deadlier Pandemic Could Soon Be Here, Zeynep Tufekci, NY Times, 2/3/23: “The world needs to act now, before H5N1 has any chance of becoming a devastating pandemic.” (Ed. Note: free read. The dangerous Avian Flu virus is mutating.)

1.5 Degrees Was Never the End of the World: The most famous climate goal is woefully misunderstood, Emma Marris, The Atlantic, 2/1/23: “In 2023, limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is a fantasy. It is not happening. We have already warmed the planet more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit).” Ed.: These goals are policy, not science. No one knows for sure what the tipping point is. We’ve passed it anyway.

Video shows mysterious whirlpool spiral flying over Hawaii night sky, Kelly Kasulis Cho, Washington Post, 1/31/23

Subaru Telescope at Mauna Kea Nat Ast Obs Japan

Astronomers Say They Have Spotted the Universe’s First Stars: Theory has it that “Population III” stars brought light to the cosmos. The James Webb Space Telescope may have just glimpsed them, Jonathan O’Callaghan, Quanta, 1/30/23

Did the Seeds of Life Ride to Earth Inside an Asteroid? Biological amino acids could have celestial or terrestrial roots. An experiment simulated their formation in deep space—but the mystery isn’t solved yet, Katrina Miller, Wired, 1/31/23

Whispers of A.I.’s Modular Future: ChatGPT is in the spotlight, but it’s Whisper—OpenAI’s open-source speech-transcription program—that shows us where machine learning is going, James Somers, New Yorker, 2/1/23.

Who’s Responsible for Fixing Tech? Mark Hurst, Creative Good, 2/3/23: “If you, like so many others, are feeling that “something is in the air,” that tech is on the wrong track – then you know who really should do something about it. It’s you.”

How supermarket freezers are heating the planet, and how they could change: Grocery chains under pressure to switch from HFCs to natural refrigerants to curb climate change, Emily Chung, CBC, 1/29/23

Is climate change affecting the polar vortex? Some researchers link disruptions to the polar vortex to climate change, while others attribute them to natural variability, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 2/1/23

Microplastics Are Filling the Skies. Will They Affect the Climate? Nicola Jones, Yale Environment 360, 2/1/23: “Recent studies reveal that tiny pieces of plastic are constantly lofted into the atmosphere. These particles can travel thousands of miles and affect the formation of clouds, which means they have the potential to impact temperature, rainfall, and even climate change.”

Grim Reapers: Mega-agriculture is destroying the Corn Belt and the Central Valley, which the country’s food system depends on. Can midsize farms survive to save it? Ian Frazier, NY Review of Books, 2/9/23 issue

Takeout has a plastic problem. But just how much do reusable containers really help? A new, intensive lifecycle assessment compared the benefits of buy-and-return container schemes with the costs of their production and use. The takeaway wasn’t clean, Emma Bryce, Anthropocene, 1/27/23

These everyday items endanger the environment. Here’s how to handle them: How to safely dispose of paint, batteries, light bulbs and other potentially risky products cluttering up your cabinets, Melanie D.G. Kaplan, Washington Post, 1/31/23

Power storage for a renewable-based electric grid could be parked next door: A new study estimates that enough EV battery storage could be available to stabilize a solar- and wind-based grid by 2050, Sarah DeWeerdt, Anthropocene, 1/31/23

It’s not all lithium all the time: DOE commits millions to hydrogen fuel research, Jennifer Solis, Nevada Current, 1/31/23

The Case of the Incredibly Long-Lived Mouse Cells: Scientists kept the rodents’ immune T cells active four times longer than mice can live—with huge implications for cancer, vaccination, and aging research, Max G. Levy, Wired, 1/30/23

How CRISPR could help save crops from devastation caused by pests: Gene editing insects could help reduce reliance on pesticides—and help protect billion-dollar industries, Emma Foehringer Merchant, MIT Technology Review, 2/2/23

Dangerous Fungi Are Spreading Across U.S. as Temperatures Rise: Some fungi such as the type that causes Valley Fever might be adapting to endure more heat stress, Dominique Mosberger, Wall Street Journal, 2/1/23 (Ed: mindblowing story, no paywall)

Nobody wants to die on the way
caught between ghosts of whiteness
and the real water

—from “A Song for Many Movements,” Audre Lorde