The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 229, September 29, 2024 (V5 #21)
Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1- It's completely impossible. 2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing. 3- I said it was a good idea all along.—Arthur C. Clarke
There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.—Mark Hanna (1896)
We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.—Carson McCullers
Books, Music, Art, Culture
Sorry, Babe. Sorry, Willie. Ohtani the Sho-stopper is baseball’s greatest: Shohei Ohtani had the most mind-boggling game ever last week, then just kept on slugging and stealing, Rick Reilly, Washington Post, 9/24/24: “…then came last Thursday, when the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Japanese giant Shohei Ohtani had the single greatest day in the history of professional baseball, which, admittedly, has been a thing for only 155 years.” (No Paywall)
How Jack London Foresaw the Anti-Democratic Future With The Iron Heel: on the Dangers of Oligarchic Totalitarian Rule in Fiction and in Real Life, Ken McGoogan, LitHub, 9/23/24: “London knew the ruling class was tough and would hit back because he himself was tough.” Book: Shadows of Tyranny: Defending Democracy in an Age of Dictatorship
How Ruth Krauss Made a New Kind of Children’s Literature: Decades before “Inside Out,” the author showed us the inner life of kids—and the strangeness of their imagination, Adrienne Raphel, New Yorker, 9/26/24: “Krauss’s books were never didactic, and her interest was less in moralistic instruction than in the texture of imagination. She explored the world from the bottom up, tending to seeds that are still bearing fruit.”
Do we still want the future desired by the past? Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later, Elle Griffin, The Elysian, 9/24/24: “’If others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream.’ I hope we keep dreaming.”
The Forgotten Female Novelist Who Foresaw Ecology, Environmentalism, and Realist Fiction: on Harriet Martineau’s Prescient Vision of Humanity, John MacNeill Miller, LitHub, 9/25/24: “Martineau’s work wasn’t just social or sociological. It was ecological. She put far more thought into the entanglements that draw the fates of humans together with those of trees, water, grain, cattle, and fish than any English-speaking novelist I could find before her—or after her, for that matter.” Book: The Ecological Plot: How Stories Gave Rise to a Science
The Chilling Effect Is Real: Educators’ stories about preemptive book bans show how schools are censoring themselves, Jonna Perrillo, Slate, 9/23/24: “Even in states that lack divisive concepts laws regulating the teaching of so-called CRT, over half of teachers still report censoring themselves.”
When Between the World and Me Faced a School Book Ban, Ta-Nehisi Coates Decided to Report It Out: In an excerpt from his new book, The Message, the author visits South Carolina to confront a raging censorship battle—and some terrible vestiges of American history, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Vanity Fair, 9/24/24: “The truth is that even as I know and teach the power of writing, I still find myself in disbelief when I see that power at work in the real world.”
Effortless skill, mixed salads and a certain impatience with life: Michael Palin remembers Maggie Smith: Smith’s costar in two 80s comedies shares his memories of an actor blessed with an instinctive grasp of her craft, Michael Palin, The Guardian, 9/28/24: “To be blessed with such an instinctive, effortless understanding of what acting was all about made her dismissive of anything she saw as dull and uninspired. She didn’t suffer fools.”
High School Is Becoming a Cesspool of Sexually Explicit Deepfakes: AI-generated child-sexual-abuse images are flooding the web, Matteo Wong, The Atlantic, 9/26/24: “There are no silver bullets in this space, and to be effective, you are really going to need to have layered interventions across the entire life cycle of AI.”
Rich folks got your money with politics. You can get it back with politics.—Woody Guthrie
Politics, Economics, Technology
American democracy is in trouble — even if Harris wins: Five scenarios for the 2024 election and its aftermath, ranked from most democratic to least, Perry Bacon Jr., Washington Post, 9/23/24: “One of the country’s two major parties has nominated an antidemocratic candidate and seems willing to use any means necessary to elect him.” (No Paywall)
Harris stretches lead over Trump in what could be significant increase: While election almost certain to be decided by swing states, pollsters explain why growth in national polls is meaningful, Robert Tait, The Guardian, 9/28/24: “Trump would have an electoral college advantage if the national vote were tallied with the CNN poll that gave Harris a single-point lead – but that this would disappear if she were to win the national vote by a wider margin as suggested by other polls and reflected in the Guardian tracker.”
Why do people still back Trump, after everything? 5 things to understand about MAGA supporters’ thinking, Alex Hinton, The Conversation, 9/25/24: 1. Media Distortion 2. Bread on the table, money in the bank. 3. Border Invasion 4. Proven Record 5. Bull in China Shop. (This all seems crazy to me but the real point is that they’re in a cult)
It May All Come Down to Pennsylvania: Voters in this pivotal state grapple with an unfamiliar emotion: hope, D.D. Guttenplan, The Nation, 9/24/24 “…this disconnect between experience and expectation—or between cynicism and cautious optimism—was the one constant on my travels. “ (DW: this is an excellent long narrative piece, worth reading in full)
Kamala Harris Will Win the Popular Vote: Here’s how we know, Michael Podhorzer, Weekend Reading, 9/26/24: “More people are voting; new voters are much more anti-MAGA; Fewer people are changing their minds.” (DW: Of course it does not matter. Our anti-democratic, obsolete Electoral College is all that does matter.)
Young voters play ‘potentially decisive’ role in 2024 election: As campaigns and election efforts target millions of the youngest voters in battleground states, new poll shows Harris has a strong lead among that age group, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Susan Svrluga, Washington Post, 9/25/24
These companies are bankrolling a multi-million dollar effort to elect Mark Robinson governor of North Carolina: Judd Legum, Popular Information, 9/23/24: “Many of the most prominent corporations in America are supporting Robinson's candidacy through the RGA.”
Major Conservative Poll Cited by Media Secretly Worked With Trump Team: Leaked emails reveal the truth about Rasmussen Reports—and the way the Trump campaign is breaking election law, Hafiz Rashid, New Republic, 9/27/24
A Haitian Immigrant in Springfield Experiences the Best and Worst of America: How the past few weeks have “kind of shifted” Viles Dorsainvil’s idea about the country, Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker, 9/24/24: “I’ve been experiencing the worst of America, in terms of how a leader, through his speech, can denigrate or marginalize or divide a community and create harm to a vulnerable group of people by firing up his base for his own political ends…But, at the same time, I’ve been experiencing the best of America where there is solidarity, where there is love.”
How Immigration Became a Lightning Rod in American Politics: Anti-immigrant think tanks and advocacy groups operated on the margins until Trump became president. Now they have molded not only the GOP but also Democrats in their image, Gaby Del Valle, The Nation, 9/25/24
At Indigenous Sacred Sites, Seeing Things I’m Not Supposed to See: Western journalism tends to value transparency as a public good. But as an Indigenous reporter, I face a unique set of challenges: Include too-specific cultural details, and I risk endangering my community, B. ‘Toastie’ Oaster, ProPublica, 9/27/24
It’s not safe to be pregnant in America: A college in Iowa is requiring faculty to report pregnant students, Lyz Lenz, Men Yell at Me, 9/25/24: “…in states with abortion restrictions, people’s lives and personal safety are at risk for the crime of having reproductive organs.”
Revealed: how the fossil fuel industry helps spread anti-protest laws across the US, Hilary Beaumont, Nina Lakhani, The Guardian, 9/26/24: “Lobbyists and lawmakers have coordinated to enact new laws that increase criminal penalties for peaceful protests.”
Escaping the New Gilded Age: In an America where wealth has increasingly become the primary source of social status, billionaires are viewed as entrepreneurial geniuses who exhibit unique levels of creativity, courage, foresight, and expertise on a wide range of topics. Yet it should be obvious that wealth is a poor metric for wisdom, Daron Acemoglu, Project Syndicate, 9/27/24
Jimmy Carter’s Century: America’s 39th president is arguably one of the most misunderstood and unfairly maligned figures in US political history. Although many consider his presidency a failure, Carter helped pave the way for a revolution in US economic policy and played a pivotal role in taming the high inflation of the 1970s, Jeffrey Frankel, Project Syndicate, 9/24/24
Radio Silence: How Progressives Lost the Airwaves: Inside the GOP's 30-year plan to dominate America’s talk radio system…Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 9/25/24: “Along with Fox “News,” rightwing talk radio is the main way Republicans have seized and held control over multiple red states. History shows that putting progressive programming on the air in those states could reverse that trend.”
To Be or Not to Be: Ukraine and the Biden Legacy, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 9/24/24: “’To be or not to be.’ For the Biden administration, this is about legacy, about being remembered as having changed the world for the better. For Ukraine, this is literal, about survival, about being in the world.”
Israel’s strike on Hezbollah leader is an alarming escalation in conflict: Long-understood rules governing balance of deterrence between militant group and Israel have been blown away, Peter Beaumont, The Guardian, 9/28/24: “Netanyahu and his military chiefs have taken an enormous gamble…”
Bibi’s Wider War: Not good for the Jews, not good for Kamala Harris, Robert Kuttner, American Prospect, 9/27/24: “A Harris speech signaling a different approach is one she should give after she is elected, not before. That is, unless the combination of Netanyahu’s deliberate ploys and Biden’s weakness help elect Donald Trump.”
Do you always trust your first, initial feeling?
Special knowledge holds true, bears believing
I turned around and the water was closing all around
Like a glove, like the love, that had finally, finally found me
—from “Crystal,” Stevie Nicks
Science, Environment
‘We can feel our ancestors’: one First Nation’s fight to save Canada’s old forests: The Wet’suwet’en First Nation never signed treaties with the Canadian or provincial governments, yet their land was leased to timber companies, Erica Gies, The Guardian, 9/23/24: “We remember our stories when we are able to put our feet on the land … There’s lots of good medicine there for us.”
The lonely Lake Superior caribou and a lesson in limits: Ontario’s southernmost herd illustrates how hard it is to bring a species back from the brink — and why we need to recognize tipping points before we reach them, Emma McIntosh, Narwhal, 9/27/24
Earth may have breached seven of nine planetary boundaries, health check shows: Ocean acidification close to critical threshold, say scientists, posing threat to marine ecosystems and global liveability, Damien Gayle, The Guardian, 9/23/24: “Ocean acidification is approaching a critical threshold.”
What Helene could signal about the rest of hurricane season, and beyond: Will September be a test of what’s to come for hurricane season with a record-hot ocean and more storms lining up in the Atlantic? Sarah Kaplan, et al, Washington Post, 9/28/24: “…the number of major hurricanes globally increased between 1979 and 2017…studies found that the trend could not be easily explained by natural variability.” (No Paywall)
Do wild fish belong to the public? Or are they there for private profit? A group of prominent ocean scientists are calling on fishery managers to flip the status quo on its head, Warren Cornwall, Anthropocene, 9/25/24: “The current concept of ‘sustainable fishing’, adopted by governments and private actors since the post-war period is scientifically obsolete.”
How Climate Change Is Killing Cities: We mourn glaciers and forests lost to climate change. Why not streets and sewers? Eve Andrews, The Atlantic, 9/26/24: “We don’t actually fundamentally understand that the cities that we build are also part of nature.”
Seeing in the Dark: On Bats as Companions, Protectors and Muses: the Essential Role of These Much-Maligned Flying Mammals, Vanessa Chakour, LitHub, 9/24/24: “We need to adapt to local cultures and landscapes instead of making them adapt to us.” Book: Earthly Bodies: Embracing Animal Nature
How Drones Are Revolutionizing Dolphin Research in Florida: Breath samples? Check. Body condition data? Check. Technology has taken off—literally, Lindsey Liles, Garden & Gun, 9/24/24: “We no longer have to touch the animals or harm them in any way to get genetic information.”
Electricity That Costs Nothing—or Even Less? It’s Happening More and More: A surge in wind and solar power means many businesses and consumers around Europe can get paid for plugging in. The U.S. could be next, Matthew Dalton, Wall Street Journal, 9/22/24
This elegant solution to expanding the grid costs half as much as building new power lines: Reconductoring has been mostly overlooked in the United States—until now. A new study finds the potential for billions of dollars in savings, Sarah DeWeerdt, Anthropocene, 9/24/24: “…reconductoring — replacing existing steel-cored power lines with so-called advanced conductors, which have a composite core and can carry approximately twice as much power at a given diameter compared to conventional lines.”
New battery cathode material could revolutionize EV market and energy storage, Georgia Inst. of Technology, ScienceDaily, 9/24/24: “The revolutionary material, iron chloride (FeCl3), costs a mere 1-2% of typical cathode materials and can store the same amount of electricity.”
Scientists Figured Out How to Recycle Plastic by Vaporizing It: A new technique could prevent tons of waste in the future—if it can scale, Elizabeth Rayne, Wired, 9/27/24: “The recycling process the team used is known as isomerizing ethenolysis, which relies on a catalyst to break down olefin polymer chains into their small molecules.”
A cheap, low-tech solution for storing carbon may be sitting in the dirt: Figuring out ways of locking carbon out of the atmosphere, such as by burying wood, is key to stalling the worst consequences of climate change, Dino Grandoni, Washington Post, 9/26/24: “A 3,775-year-old log unintentionally discovered under a farm in Canada may point to a deceptively simple method of locking climate-warming carbon out of the atmosphere for thousands of years.” (No Paywall)
Plan to refreeze Arctic sea ice shows promise in first tests: Field trials indicate that pumping seawater onto the snow on top of Arctic sea ice can make the ice thicker, offering a possible way to preserve sea ice throughout the summer, Madeleine Cuff, New Scientist, 9/23/24
As Climate Changes Fuels Animal Movement, Will These Structures Still Help Species Cross the Road? Research shows that global warming is triggering widespread species redistribution. This could hinder the effectiveness of a key conservation tool, experts say, Kiley Price, Inside Climate News, 9/24/24
How cities run dry: Rivers, lakes, and reservoirs long strained by overuse now face climate change. Some cities are turning to water restrictions to get back on track, Tanya Petach, Kaitlin Sullivan, Yale Climate Connections, 9/23/24: “The cause is a combination of human-caused overuse and unprecedented shifts in the climate.”
Nearly 200 compounds linked to breast cancer found in food packaging, tableware: Study: The new research comes as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration re-evaluates management of potentially harmful chemicals in food additives and packaging, Brian Bienkowski, Environmental Health News, 9/24/24
Thousands of toxins from food packaging found in humans – research: Metals and PFAS linked to serious health issues are among compounds found, highlighting need for further scrutiny, Tom Perkins, The Guardian, 9/27/24: “…some hazardous chemicals … migrate from packaging into food, so there is a contribution to exposure from packaging.”
Stop blaming technology, yeah
Blaming technology, oh
May you please restart
Making your apologies, oh
Blaming technology, yeah
Blaming technology, oh
Here's what I say to them
"What is your point?"
Here's what I say to them
"Things fall apart"
—from “Atomized,” Andrew Bird
Health, Wellness
Florida bans instruction on contraception and consent in sex ed classes, Rebecca Crosby, Noel Sims, Popular Information, 9/25/24: “Research shows that Florida's abstinence-only approach does not result in teens having less sex.”
‘Drug-resistant typhoid is the final warning sign’: disease spreads in Pakistan as antibiotics fail: As world leaders discuss the battle against superbugs in New York, Pakistan’s children are suffering on the frontline the world is facing an antibiotic emergency: a data-led plan of action is needed now, Misbah Khan, The Guardian, 9/24/24
New study mapping stem cells reveals molecular choreography behind individual variation in human development: Findings provide insights into the biological individuality of each human and may aid advancing personalized regenerative therapies, Johns Hopkins Univ., Science Daily, 9/25/24
Psychedelics excite cells in hippocampus to reduce anxiety, Cornell University, Science Daily, 9/24/24: “That opens up the possibility to design psychedelic inspired drugs that target anxiety without evoking potent hallucinations.”
The Vagus Nerve’s Crucial Role in Creating the Human Sense of Mind: Like a highway system, the vagus nerve branches profusely from your brain through your organs to marshal bodily functions, including aspects of mind such as mood, pleasure, and fear, Douglas Fields, Wired, 9/29/24
How AI could monitor brain health and find dementia sooner: Using advanced artificial intelligence algorithms, scientists are hoping to identify brain wave patterns associated with the risk of dementia, Marlene Cimons, Washington Post, 9/24/24
My secret is that I'm in complete control of my-
self; no matter how it seems; and how I do it, is a secret.
—from “Secret,” Alice Notley
Birds, Birding
An Indigenous-led project in Manitoba aims to protect bird species where they thrive, EHN Curators, Environmental Health News, 9/25/24: “Protecting the Seal River watershed is crucial to sustaining bird species that have been devastated elsewhere by human activity. This effort highlights the importance of Indigenous-led conservation in preserving biodiversity.”
A Promising New Tool in the Fight to Preserve Bobwhite Quail: Now approved by the FDA, a Texas scientist’s parasite-fighting feed could be a game changer for the South’s beloved game bird, Mike Grudowski, Garden & Gun, 9/27/24
Election countdown: 37 days until the most consequential election of our lifetimes.
How You Can Help Rural-to-Rural Voter Turnout: Become a Host for Harris: Host a Vice Presidential Debate Watch Party for Gov. Walz!
Take action to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz
Let’s get to work. Do whatever you can in the next few weeks to make a difference for all of us.
Please continue to keep in touch. Send messages and your own news. Hearing from you makes this all worthwhile. Stay well; share love; work for good. We need each other, now more than ever. I know we can do this.
Love is always the place where I begin and end.—bell hooks
Love always—David