The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 31, December 13, 2020
“The light at the end of the tunnel has showed us how stinky and bad the tunnel is…”—Kate McKinnon as Dr. Weknowdis, SNL, Dec 12, 2020
“Keep your 'lectric eye on me babe
Put your ray gun to my head
Press your space face close to mine love
Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah”
—David Bowie, Moonage Daydream, 1972
THE WORST PERSON IN AMERICA TODAY: MITCH MCCONNELL
“It is beyond our understanding how Republicans who claim to believe in democracy, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), can remain silent. The president is incinerating belief in American democracy, and almost the entire leadership of the Republican Party is complicit.” —Washington Post editorial, Dec 8, 2020
“Texas’s lawsuit and the Republican Party’s embrace of it is an unprecedented attempt to destroy the very foundation of our democracy. Since the 1980s, Republican leaders have managed to hold onto power by suppressing votes, promoting disinformation, gerrymandering states, gaming the Electoral College, and stacking the courts.
Now, so unpopular that even gaming the mechanics of our system is not enough, they have abandoned democracy itself.” —Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, Dec 10, 2020
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The GOP Abandons Democracy, David Graham, The Atlantic, Dec 10, 2020
In the first few weeks after the election, anonymous Republicans and White House officials insisted that Trump’s lack of a concession was no reason for alarm. They assured reporters that Trump knew he’d lost and just needed time to process his defeat—and to put up enough of a fight that he could maintain his image. Perhaps that was true, and perhaps it remains true now, but Trump isn’t acting like someone working through the stages of grief. He’s acting like someone working through a slow-motion (and probably doomed) autogolpe.
Instead of Republican officeholders waiting out Trump’s postelection tantrum, he is waiting them out, and slowly bringing the party around to his side. In this way, Trump is ending his presidency just the way he won it: by correctly recognizing what Republican voters want and giving it to them, and gradually forcing the party’s purported leaders to follow along.
This embrace of the president’s attempt to overturn the results of the election is both shocking and horrifying. As Trump’s fraud claims and legal cases have steadily failed, the arguments he has pursued have become more outlandish and absurd, and they have also become more disturbing. Many Republican voters agree, and in refusing to stand up to him and them, Republican officials have gone from coddling a sore loser to effectively abandoning democracy.
Hope and Peace: Bison Return to the Rosebud Reservation, John C. Cannon, Mongabay, Dec 10, 2020
The Sicangu Lakota Oyate, the Native nation living on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of South Dakota, released 100 American bison onto part of an 11,300-hectare (28,000-acre) pasture.
The project is a collaboration between the Sicangu Oyate’s economic arm, REDCO, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and WWF.
Over the next five years, the leaders of the Wolakota Buffalo Range project hope to expand the herd to 1,500 buffalo, which would make it the largest owned by a Native nation.
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Toyota’s game-changing solid state battery en route for 2021 release, Nikkei staff writers, Asia Nikkei, Dec 10, 2020
TOKYO -- A trip of 500 km on one charge. A recharge from zero to full in 10 minutes. All with minimal safety concerns. The solid-state battery being introduced by Toyota promises to be a game changer not just for electric vehicles but for an entire industry.
The technology is a potential cure-all for the drawbacks facing electric vehicles that run on conventional lithium-ion batteries, including the relatively short distance traveled on a single charge as well as charging times. Toyota plans to be the first company to sell an electric vehicle equipped with a solid-state battery in the early 2020s. The world's largest automaker will unveil a prototype next year.
Young ravens rival adult chimps in a big test of general intelligence, Rachel Nuwer, Scientific American, Dec 10, 2020
“Quite often, in single tasks, you’re just testing whether the bird can understand that you’re hiding something,” says Simone Pika, a cognitive scientist at Osnabrück University in Germany.
A new study that that tries to address that deficit provides some of the best proof yet that ravens, including young birds of just four months of age, have certain types of smarts that are on par with those of adult great apes. The brainy birds performed just as well as chimpanzees and orangutans across a broad array of tasks designed to measure intelligence. “We now have very strong evidence to say that, at least in the tasks we used, ravens are very similar to great apes,” says Pika, lead author of the study. “Across a whole spectrum of cognitive skills, their intelligence is really quite amazing.” The findings, published in Scientific Reports, add to a growing body of evidence indicating that impressive cognitive skills are not solely the domain of primates but occur in certain species across the animal kingdom.
Through war, wildfire, and pandemic, the world’s seed banks hold strong, Liz Kimbrough, Mongabay, Dec 8, 2020
The global network of plant gene banks has shown resilience and cooperation, growing in importance as an estimated 40% of plant species are threatened with extinction and the crops used to feed the world become less diverse.
A newly published paper documents the rescue mission of seeds from a gene bank in Syria to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, and discusses the extensive global system for conserving crop diversity and why it is imperative to do so.
While Svalbard’s vaults store crop seeds, the Millennium Seed Bank at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is the world’s largest wild seed conservation project, now celebrating its 20th anniversary.
Gene banks are an important part of conservation, but they are not sufficient on their own, one expert says; the wild places and agro-ecosystems these plants come from must also be protected.
The fantastic book about Svalbard by its founder Cary Fowler: Seeds on Ice: Svalbard and the Global Seed Vault.
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Human-made materials now equal the weight of all life on Earth, Maddie Stone, National Geographic, Dec 9, 2020
Environmentalists often say that humanity needs to shrink its planetary footprint. Now, a new study has demonstrated how literally massive that footprint is.
While the mass of Earth’s life forms stands at about 1.1 trillion metric tons (1.2 trillion U.S. tons) and has not changed much in recent years, the so-called “anthropogenic mass” of artificial materials is growing exponentially. The mass of everything people have built and made, from concrete pavements and glass-and-metal skyscrapers to plastic bottles, clothes, and computers, is now roughly equal to the mass of living things on Earth and could surpass that this year, according to research published today in Nature.
The finding may bolster the argument that Earth has entered the Anthropocene, a proposed geologic epoch in which humans are the dominant force shaping the planet. As senior study author Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel puts it, the world is undergoing a material transition that “happens not just once in a lifetime, but once in an era.”
Indigenous activists speak out against plans to import radioactive material to southeast Utah: Residents complain of health problems and believe the environment is being damaged, Zak Podmore, Salt Lake Tribune, Dec 10, 2020
For the last conventional uranium mill still operating in the United States, however, the business model has changed. San Juan County’s White Mesa Mill, which is owned by the Denver-based company Energy Fuels Resources, hasn’t processed ore from local mines in recent years. Instead, it has survived primarily by accepting uranium-bearing material from around the country and, more recently, as far away as Japan. State regulators are also considering an application from the company to import material from Estonia.
Members of the Ute Mountain Ute community of White Mesa, which is located three miles from the mill site, spoke out against the mill’s continued operation on Tuesday at an annual town hall event that was held virtually this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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PFAS CHEMICAL ASSOCIATED WITH SEVERE COVID-19, A Danish study found that people with elevated levels of a compound called PFBA were more than twice as likely to have a severe form of Covid-19, Sharon Lerner, The Intercept, Dec 7, 2020
Elevated levels of a PFAS compound were associated with more severe forms of Covid-19, according to a Danish study now undergoing peer review. The research, which involved 323 patients infected with the coronavirus, found that those who had elevated levels of a chemical called PFBA were more than twice as likely to have a severe form of the disease.
PFBA is one of a class of industrial compounds, often called “forever chemicals,” that has come to contaminate soil, water, and food around the world. It has been presented as relatively safe because it stays in human blood for much less time than some of the other compounds in the class and is a shorter molecule. Both traits are thought to be indications of its innocuousness. PFBA, which was created by 3M, is based on a four-carbon chain and is gone from human blood in a matter of days. It is still in use, while PFOA, which is based on eight carbons and stays in the human blood for years, has been phased out since 2015.
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Diet modifications - including more wine and cheese - may help reduce cognitive decline, Iowa State Univ, Science Daily, Dec 10, 2020
Here are four of the most significant findings from the study:
Cheese, by far, was shown to be the most protective food against age-related cognitive problems, even late into life;
The daily consumption of alchohol, particularly red wine, was related to improvements in cognitive function;
Weekly consumption of lamb, but not other red meats, was shown to improve long-term cognitive prowess; and
Excessive consumption of salt is bad, but only individuals already at risk for Alzheimer's Disease may need to watch their intake to avoid cognitive problems over time.
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Former Israeli space security chief says aliens exist, humanity not ready, Aaron Reich, Jerusalem Post, Dec 8, 2020
Has the State of Israel made contact with aliens?
According to retired Israeli general and current professor Haim Eshed, the answer is yes, but this has been kept a secret because "humanity isn't ready."
Speaking in an interview to Yediot Aharonot, Eshed – who served as the head of Israel's space security program for nearly 30 years and is a three-time recipient of the Israel Security Award – explained that Israel and the US have both been dealing with aliens for years.
And this by no means refers to immigrants, with Eshed clarifying the existence of a "Galactic Federation."
The 87-year-old former space security chief gave further descriptions about exactly what sort of agreements have been made between the aliens and the US, which ostensibly have been made because they wish to research and understand "the fabric of the universe." This cooperation includes a secret underground base on Mars, where there are American and alien representatives.
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Memory Tries to Get Our Attention
Memory wanders the earth in this era
of pandemic and fear.
She whispers stories of past plagues,
reminds us of holocausts
and genocides,
tells us this too shall pass.
Memory tries to get our attention
with books, songs, graphs,
even humor, assures us
the friendly touch
we miss today will still
be there tomorrow.
But memory herself is exhausted,
battered by an onslaught
of mixed messages, history books
with missing chapters,
biased news reports
and self-proclaimed scribes.
She insists she's as timely as science
and hope, tries to take her seat
at the table of experts,
get us to see her for who she is
at a time when she knows
she is needed as never before.
Listen to Memory calling.
Ask our elders
for her tales of pain and heroics,
kindness and relevance.
She will take your hand
if you give her yours.
—Margaret Randall, from Starfish on a Beach: The Pandemic Poems, Wings Press, 2020
Dick Allen, a fearsome hitter who was a seven-time All-Star, the 1964 NL Rookie of the Year and the 1972 AL MVP, has died. He was 78. He belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
“Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to”
--Bob Dylan, It’s Alright Ma
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(When you know)
you're not going to win,
you flatten the pedal and take it to the far end of the arc,
with dead weight watching your back for whatever calls
out from the sky, directly opposite the blinding star
nearly passing to see
(what might exist)
across the northern plains interstate of a window
down in the open mind of a spring evening,
—Richard Buckner, from “Beaten” in Cuttings from the Tangle
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As of today, we will pass a terrible milestone in American history, with more than 300,000 of our fellow human beings dead from COVID-19. The daily toll is accelerating at a fearsome rate. The despicably incompetent Trump “administration” will depart on January 20, 2021, leaving behind a poorly designed vaccine rollout, and purposefully undermining its successors in every way possible and setting the stage for distrust of the new government by as much as a third of the country. There is so much work to be done: to stop the pandemic, to build a more sustainable economy, to restore a healthy planetary ecosystem, and to repair American democracy.
We will get through this. But let us not forget those who have lost their lives and let us never forget those who are responsible, while we work for a better world for all of us.
And let us also never forget the Republicans who have conspired to overthrow the democratic institutions and beliefs that have survived up til now, for almost 250 years.
These Republicans may not be capable of shame, but you should know who they are, Ruth Marcus, Washington Post, Dec 13, 2020. Please click through to read — and memorize — the shameful list of elected leaders who are now seditious traitors to our country.
You can buy books from The Weird Times reading list at Bookshop.org to support independent booksellers across America.
The latest podcast at Writerscast is my interview with the exceptional author Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, about her wonderful and mysterious first novel, Even as We Breathe.
Stay safe, be vigilant, care for others, never quit working for the good of the planet.