The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 35, January 10, 2021
Of course you could have seen this coming: The people who invaded the Capitol have spent years showing us who they are online, Abby Kohlheiser, MIT Technology Review, 1/8/21
Banning Trump doesn’t solve the problem
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube didn’t create conspiracy thinking or extremist ideologies, of course. Nor did they invent the idea of dangerous personality cults. But these platforms have—by design—handed those groups the mechanisms to reach much larger audiences much faster, and to recruit and radicalize new converts, even at the expense of the people and communities those ideologies target for abuse. And crucially, even when it was clear what was happening, they chose the minimal amount of change—or decided not to intervene at all.
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Senator Josh Hawley’s Outrage, Lawrence Lessig, published on Medium, 1/9/21
Unless you are familiar with this corner of the law, it’s not obvious just how outrageous Senator Josh Hawley’s stunt in Congress was. Until Hawley announced he was going to object, the Majority Leader had kept a tight lid on the process. Once Hawley opened the door, 12 others followed in the Senate. No doubt, orchestrating that challenge was not the cause of the riot. But that challenge gave comfort to those who rioted, as did the clenched fist Hawley flashed to the (soon to be) rioters as he entered the Senate.
(ed note – in this piece, Lessig provides explicit legal commentary debunking Hawley’s bad faith speech on the floor of the Senate the evening of January 6, just following the storming of the capitol by the Trump fevered mob. It’s worth clicking through to read in full).
“This was a career-defining speech for Senator Hawley. Not in a good way.”
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“Supporting Josh (Hawley) and trying so hard to get him elected to the Senate was the worst mistake I ever made in my life. Yesterday was the physical culmination of the long attempt (by Hawley and others) to foment a lack of public confidence in our democratic system. It is very dangerous to America to continue pushing this idea that government doesn’t work and that voting was fraudulent.” – former Missouri Senator John C. Danforth, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1/8/21
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Riot on the Hill, Mike Davis, Sidecar (New Left Review), 1/7/21
Tomorrow liberal pundits may reassure us that the Republicans have committed suicide, that the age of Trump is over, and that Democrats are on the verge of reclaiming hegemony. Similar declarations, of course, were made during vicious Republican primaries in 2015. They seemed very convincing at the time. But an open civil war amongst Republicans may only provide short-term advantages to Democrats, whose own divisions have been rubbed raw by Biden’s refusal to share power with progressives. Freed from Trump’s electronic fatwas, moreover, some of the younger Republican senators may prove to be much more formidable competitors for the white college-educated suburban vote than centrist Democrats realize. In any event, the only future that we can reliably foresee – a continuation of extreme socio-economic turbulence – renders political crystal balls useless.
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STORMING OF THE CAPITOL WAS OPENLY PLANNED BUT IGNORED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT: Despite billions spent on intelligence and surveillance, U.S. law enforcement permitted an armed Trumpist mob to sack the Capitol, Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept, 1/7/21
Adam Isacson, the D.C.-based director of the defense oversight program at the Washington Office on Latin America, linked the events to a broader politicization of law enforcement under Trump, reminiscent of the anti-democratic movements the U.S. has historically sponsored in countries around the world. “You don’t get to ransack the Capitol for hours, then calmly walk away, unless law enforcement and its command share your views,” he wrote. “What we saw yesterday was tacit approval of the rioters. Full stop.”
For those who have followed far-right violence during the Trump presidency, the most shocking thing about the events of January 6, 2021, may be just how predictable it all was. In an address before the violence began, the president, who had long made clear that he had no interest in conceding the election, reminded his supporters that they had been wronged by evil actors and that it was up to them to fight back for the fate of the country. He anointed them the stars of their own action movie, with the final climactic scene now at hand. “If you don’t fight like hell,” Trump warned, “you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He told his followers that together they would march on the Capitol and make their voices heard. Of course, he personally did not do this — Trump climbed into an armored vehicle and left the scene — but his supporters did precisely what they were told to do.
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The terrible scenes on Capitol Hill illustrate how Donald Trump has changed his party: And how hard it will be to rid it of him, The Economist, 1/9/21
The most important book of the Trump era was not Bob Woodward’s “Fear” or Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” or any of the other bestselling exposes of the White House circus. Arguably it was a wonkish tome by two Harvard political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, published a year into Donald Trump’s presidency and entitled How Democracies Die. (ed note: this article is behind a paywall)
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The insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol this week took part in an attack on American democracy. They also took part in a violent expression of conspiracism, one that is deeply familiar to me. I spent the better part of a year reporting and writing our June 2020 cover story about the fringe movement known as QAnon. What people all over the world saw and heard out of Washington, D.C., on Wednesday was a direct echo of what I encountered in cities all over America over the course of my reporting. It was always plain to me that the growing QAnon movement would lead to more violence, and it came as no surprise to see so many QAnon believers in the mob. I ultimately came to understand that QAnon is, at its core, a pro-Trump delusion. Its disciples worship him as a savior figure, and cling to a prophecy that foretells a bloody political revolution that will give way to a mass spiritual awakening.
My belief is that QAnon isn’t merely a dangerous conspiracy theory. We are witnessing the birth of a new religion, one that will continue to fixate on Trump when he leaves office. And, as was made terrifyingly clear this week, we are likely closer to the beginning of its story than the end. —Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic (weekly newsletter, 1/9/21)
The Prophecies of Q, American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase, TheAtlantic, June 2020 issue
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The Capitol Takeover That Wasn’t, Ted Widmer, NY Times, 1/8/21
In the confusion that followed Wednesday’s desecration of the Capitol, it was widely reported that the last time the building was stormed was in 1814. That overlooked a desperate day in 1861, nearly as lethal to democracy. On Feb. 13, a mob gathered outside the Capitol and tried to force its way in to disrupt the counting of the electoral certificates that would confirm Abraham Lincoln’s election three months earlier.
The key difference between then and now is that the building was guarded by men who were prepared for the onslaught.
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‘Once you engage in political violence, it becomes easier to do it again’ – an expert on political violence reflects on events at the Capitol, Naomi Schalit and Ore Koren, The Conversation, 1/7/21
What hugely contributed to all of this is misinformation. People mobilized based on a conspiracy with no evidence. I think this is a major problem that has to be addressed – I don’t know how. But it is really crucial to address the underlying problem – that people believe in what they feel is real, not what is real.
Once you engage in political violence, it becomes easier to do it again. But if there’s an effective state response to these events, then it can help strengthen those institutions.
So, I think a lot of people will be saying, look, this is all going to have long-term negative implications. But there’s also a possibility that this can actually help in the long run by showing the grave consequences of manipulating democratic institutions for political gain. Again, it depends on how the state and politicians and security and everybody responds to this. But having a history of political violence is a pretty strong predictor of future violence.
I think it’s really important for federal authorities to show their ability to tackle this. When it comes down to it, the government must show that it can protect American democracy, through force if necessary.
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The pandemic taught us how not to deal with climate change: We must transform the economy, not halt it, to prevent runaway warming. And we're doing it far, far too slowly today, James Temple, MIT Technology Review, 1/1/21
But here is what frightens me the most about what happened in 2020.
Researchers and advocates have long assumed, or hoped, that people would start taking climate change seriously as it began to inflict real harms. After all, how could they continue to deny it and refuse to take action once the dangers were upon them and their families?
But what we’ve seen in the pandemic doesn’t bear that out. Even after more than 300,000 Americans have died of covid-19, huge portions of the population continue to deny the threat and refuse to abide by basic public health measures, like wearing masks and canceling holiday travel. Despite waves of infections tied to Thanksgiving gatherings, millions packed the airports the weekend before Christmas.
That’s terrifying in itself, but it’s particularly ominous for climate change.
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Joan Micklin Silver, pioneering film, theater and television director, has died.
“She was a female director at a time when studio executives were more than comfortable with being openly sexist, telling Silver: “Women directors are one more problem we don’t need.”
She made distinctly Jewish movies, as opposed to the kind of Jewish-lite movies that were – and are still – Hollywood’s more usual style. Her two greatest films, Hester Street (1975), about a Jewish immigrant couple (Steven Keats and Carol Kane) on the Lower East Side in the 1890s, and the peerless 1988 romcom Crossing Delancey, about a modern young woman (Amy Irving) who is reluctantly fixed up with a pickle seller (Peter Riegert), are to When Harry Met Sally what the Netflix series Shtisel is to Seinfeld: Jewish as opposed to merely Jew-ish.” (Hadley Freeman, The Guardian, 1/8/21)
When her success as a writer and director failed to bring her work in feature films, Silver decided to write and direct her own film. Her husband agreed to raise the money for the film and serve as its producer. The film became Hester Street, adapted by Silver from the 1890s novella Yekl by Abraham Cahan, later the editor of the Jewish Daily Forward. Interviewed by American Film magazine in 1989, Silver spoke about her choice of subject for Hester Street. “I thought, I’m going to make one that will count for my family. My parents were Russian Jewish, and my father was no longer living, but I cared a lot about the ties I had to that world. So that was how Hester Street started.” (Marlene Booth, Jewish Women’s Archive)
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Such is the sickness of many a good thing
that now into my life from long ago this
refusing to say I love you has bound
the weeping, the yielding, the
yearning to be taken again,
into a knot, a waiting, a string
—Robert Duncan, Such is theSickness of Many a Good Thing (1967)
‘Great concern’ as study finds microplastics in human placentas, Elizabeth Claire Alberts, Mongabay, 1/6/21
A new study has found microplastics present inside human placentas, which could potentially affect fetal health and development.
The microplastics probably entered the women’s bodies through ingestion and inhalation, and then translocated to the placentas, the study suggests.
While further research needs to be done on the subject, it is believed that these microplastics could disrupt immunity mechanisms in babies.
Plastic is everywhere — literally everywhere. A growing body of research shows that plastic is not only filling the world’s oceans and wilderness regions, it’s also invading our bodies through the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we consume. And now, a new study has shown that microplastics — tiny plastic particles smaller than 5 millimeters but bigger than 1 micron — are even present inside human placentas, posing a potential risk to fetal health and development.
Published this month in Environmental International, the study examined six human placentas from women who experienced healthy pregnancies and births. During delivery, the obstetricians and midwives followed a “plastic-free protocol,” swapping plastic gloves for cotton ones, and not using any plastic equipment or supplies to avoid cross-contamination.
The researchers found a total of 12 microplastic fragments in four of the six placentas. Three of these pieces were recognized as polypropylene, a plastic commonly used in food containers and packaging. While the other pieces were harder to identify, they appeared to be plastic bits from “man-made coatings, paints, adhesives, plasters, finger paints, polymers and cosmetics and personal care products,” according to the study.
Birds Have a Mysterious 'Quantum Sense'. For the First Time, Scientists Saw It in Action, Mike McCrae, Science Alert, 1/8/21
Now, for the first time ever, scientists from the University of Tokyo have directly observed a key reaction hypothesised to be behind birds', and many other creatures', talents for sensing the direction of the planet's poles.
Importantly, this is evidence of quantum physics directly affecting a biochemical reaction in a cell – something we've long hypothesised but haven't seen in action before.
Using a tailor-made microscope sensitive to faint flashes of light, the team watched a culture of human cells containing a special light-sensitive material respond dynamically to changes in a magnetic field.
The change the researchers observed in the lab match just what would be expected if a quirky quantum effect was responsible for the illuminating reaction.
"We've not modified or added anything to these cells," says biophysicist Jonathan Woodward.
"We think we have extremely strong evidence that we've observed a purely quantum mechanical process affecting chemical activity at the cellular level."
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Senate Democrats eye quick repeal of Trump rules, Kelsey Brugger, E&E News, 1/6/21
The impending power shift in the Senate means Congress will once again turn to the Congressional Review Act to scrap a bevy of regulations.
The law will allow the Democratic House and Senate and President-elect Joe Biden to rapidly repeal regulations finalized roughly within the past six months.
Hill Republicans and President Trump used the CRA to kill 16 Obama-era rules in 2017. Democrats, in contrast, have never deployed the CRA. They're wary of the law's blunt, deregulatory nature.
But yesterday's elections in Georgia, which appear to give Democrats a narrow majority in the Senate, have reignited the debate among lawmakers and advocates.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told Politico reporter Burgess Everett that using the CRA to repeal Trump rules would be among the Democrats' first orders of business.
Mining the sky for CO2 with metal trees, towers and pumps, John Fialka, E&E News, 1/5/21
In the 1990s, a physicist at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory made a prophetic discovery that might help reverse today's climate change.
Klaus Lackner was helping his daughter, Claire, with an eighth grade science project. She was using an aquarium air pump and a chemical, sodium hydroxide, to pull carbon dioxide out of the air. It worked. She won a prize.
That got Lackner thinking about ways to pull billions of tons of CO2 out of the air, which, he envisioned, might be the cheapest way to tackle the climate change problem.
The idea seemed far-fetched to many scientists and other experts. Extracting CO2 from the air, where it is most diluted, might require three times the amount of energy needed to remove it from smokestacks. Lackner's ambition was to develop a "mechanical version" of how a tree consumes and stores the invisible, odorless gas.
Because CO2 is steadily raising the planet's average temperatures, he did arouse some interest.
Discover magazine hailed the notion in 1995 as "one of the 7 ideas that can Change the World." Then nothing much happened for about 20 years.
Until now.
There are three rapidly growing companies forming commercial partnerships to reduce CO2 around the globe. They include some of the world's largest energy and engineering businesses. They want to rapidly scale up the process of direct air capture to reduce the climate change problem and make money.
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Is Fonio the Ancient Grain of the Future? Lisa Held, Civil Eats, 1/4/21
Thiam was born and raised in Dakar, Senegal, before gaining renown as a chef in New York City. In a 2017 TED talk, he explained how, while conducting cookbook research in Senegal, he came across a form of millet called fonio, which was still grown by smallholder farmers all over West Africa but had nearly disappeared from the urban diet.
“It turns out that fonio had been cultivated for more than 5,000 years,” Thiam says. “I became more interested in this grain that was deemed worth taking to the afterlife by early Egyptians.”
The more he learned, the more potential he saw. Fonio is basically a climate crisis-ready crop; it grows in poor soils in drought conditions with little to no inputs. Those who grow it help preserve agricultural biodiversity and cultural identity in West African countries. And it’s a nutrient-dense, naturally gluten-free ancient grain—perfectly suited to serve both local food security and Western health trends.
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Harnessing Rice Fields to Resurrect California’s Endangered Salmon: California’s salmon populations have been dangerously close to extinction for decades. A new partnership may help tip the scales toward recovery, Liza Gross, Inside Climate News, 1/5/21
It’s easy to see how biologists studying the fate of California’s native fish might fall into despair. That’s how Jacob Katz felt when he and his colleagues reported in 2011 that more than three-quarters of the state’s native freshwater fish, including its iconic Chinook salmon, were in sharp decline.
But Katz, a fly-fishing ecologist who directs Central Valley operations for the conservation nonprofit California Trout, isn’t the despairing type. His eyes lit up as he recalled the moment he realized the same forces leading California’s fish to the brink of extinction could be harnessed to reel them back.
That epiphany now drives his work. Restoration isn’t about removing any one dam or returning to some mythical pristine condition but about helping salmon recognize the rivers they evolved with, said Katz, walking along a flood-protection levee that cuts off the Sacramento River, California’s longest, from the thousands of farms and towns that occupy its historic floodplains. When you realize “farms or fish” is a false choice, he said, “suddenly you see that you can have both.”
Coronavirus: Chinese researchers’ device may detect infection in 10 minutes, Stephen Chen, South China Morning Post, 1/6/21
Chinese researchers have developed a biological sensor they say can detect the new coronavirus in 10 minutes from a throat swab, based on initial study results. The sensing chip developed by a Peking University team fits a portable, laptop-sized device, and the scientists said it detected the Sars-CoV-2 viral gene almost instantly during their testing…Their peer-reviewed paper on the technology, published in the journal Science China Materials last week, said the chip could be used in almost any point-of-care facility and could save time and money, especially for travellers who need to show a negative test result before they can board a plane.
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Inside Clean Energy: The Energy Storage Boom Has Arrived - After years of build up, a giant battery storage project is online in Moss Landing, California, and a huge one is on the way in Florida, Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News, 1/7/21
Just five years ago, a 20 megawatt battery storage project was considered big.
Now a 300 megawatt project, the largest in the world, has gone online in California, and even bigger battery projects are coming in 2021.
Battery storage has entered a new phase of rapid growth, brought on by falling prices for lithium-ion batteries and rising demand for electricity sources that can fill in the gaps in a grid that is increasingly fueled by wind and solar. High demand is leading to a boom in investment in battery companies, and fevered speculation about new kinds of batteries.
Battery storage is a crucial part of the transition to clean energy because of the way it can store power from intermittent sources for use at other times, providing a cleaner and less expensive alternative to natural gas power plants.
And 2021 is shaping up to be the year in which battery storage takes a big step toward being an essential part of the grid, rather than operating at the edges.
To help make sense of it, I reached out to Eric Gimon, a policy adviser for the think tank Energy Innovation.
“I feel like we have crossed a threshold,” he said, about the completion of a new wave of big battery projects. “That’s important, a signpost that we’re moving into a new era.”
We are living, he said, in a period when batteries “have arrived.”
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Stanford scholar applies a Norwegian mindset about winter to a COVID-19 world: Kari Leibowitz’s research about wintertime mindsets in Norway found that positive beliefs and attitudes can make a big difference to overall well-being during dark winter months, Melissa De Witte, Stanford News, 12/1/20
As people brace themselves for a long winter of cold weather, short days and COVID-19 lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders, they might find inspiration from Norwegians about how to handle the dark months ahead, according to Stanford scholar Kari Leibowitz.
Leibowitz has studied how Norwegians cope with winter and “polar nights,” the period beginning on Nov. 21 when the sun sets in Norway and doesn’t rise again for another two months. She spent a year at the University of Tromsø, located 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, to better understand how people survive – and actually, thrive – in such extreme and unusual conditions. She found that people with a positive wintertime mindset – which encompasses their thoughts, beliefs and attitudes toward the season – is positively associated with their wellbeing, including life satisfaction and personal growth.
Keeping Watch Over Seabirds at the World’s Edge, Sarah Gilman and Nathaniel Wilder, HakaiMagazine, 1/5/21
That’s why we’re here: to witness. I’m tagging along as Romano and other scientists aboard the Tiĝlax̂ gather key local information to add to the reams of seabird data that refuge scientists and allies have amassed from Alaska’s islands and coasts over the last few decades—one of the longest, largest, and most comprehensive seabird monitoring efforts in the world. The aim is to track change, particularly in numbers and breeding success. Perhaps paramount, scientists hope to catch losses in time to determine what they mean and whether they’re possible to stem. And to know what’s lost, you must first know what’s there.
“Every year we waste enough
To feed the ones who starve
We build our civilization up
And we shoot it down with wars”
—Woody Guthrie, Christ for President (music by Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett, sung by Billy Bragg and Wilco)
Quick hits:
A rare, ‘magical’ visit from a brilliantly colored bird draws crowds to Maryland park, Samantha Schmidt, Washington Post, 1/3/21
A Game Livestreaming Site Has Become an Extremist Haven: DC rioters used DLive to stream from the Capitol to thousands of people on Wednesday—and to get donations from them too, Cecilia D’Anastasio, Wired, 1/7/21
The Art of Friendship: painter, photographer, collaborate on book, Merle English, Newsday, 1/8/21
US Energy History Visualization, Center for Robust Decision Making on Climate and Energy Policy, UChicago
In Pennsylvania, A Car Dealership Becomes an Industrial Home, Quelcy Kogel, DesignSponge
Livewriters.com, my latest project, curating podcasts about books, writing and publishing.
Where We Are
There is always a maybe
before any statement about the future
There is always a potential for uncertainty
before any statement about the past
Only the present moment -
fleeting,
impossible to save
or remember,
subject always
to the laws of physics -
is certain of itself
Time is composed of certainties
lined up together
that signify nothing
but uncertainty
—David Wilk
If there was ever a week to say, “This is the week that was,” we’ve just lived through it. Stay strong; stay healthy. Take heart: there are fewer than ten days to the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Then our real work begins.
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Here is a link to a (it seems) free pdf of "How Democracies Die," the book mentioned above. https://www.pdfdrive.com/how-democracies-die-e185347513.html