The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 200, March 10, 2024 (V4 #44)
We may have all come here on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.—John Lewis
The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.—Theodore Roosevelt
Books, Music, Art, Culture
Tom Meschery, Alan Ziegler, Best American Poetry, 3/5/24: “Tom Meschery was born in Manchuria and spent five childhood years in a Japanese internment camp. He was an All-American basketball player in high school and college, and an NBA All Star.”
Our coach, who was as old as the building,
Taunted and inspired us, swore and cajoled us,
He taught us to play without frills.
We became red brick and corduroy
And learned to see through shadows.
—from “Lowell High,” Tom Meschery
Remembering Russell Banks: Mary Morris on Her Long Friendship With the Author of American Spirits: “I grew up with Russell—as a writer, as a teacher and thinker, and as a friend,” Mary Morris, LitHub, 3/5/24: “Russell understands that we are basically unknowable to one another. That humans are filled with dark secrets and motivations we cannot understand.”
Arguing Ourselves to Death: To a degree that we have yet to fully grasp, what rules our age is the ideology of the Internet, Jay Caspian Kang, New Yorker, 3/8/24: “Huxley, as it turns out, was mostly right about the ability of drivel to entomb dissent in a way that heavy-handed censorship never could.”
Impossible Desires, Adam Smyth, London Review of Books, 3/7/24: “On a certain level, there is simply too much here, or too much to be contained within one volume. But that, too, is Cummings’s point: we bring to books impossible desires, and this often personal book is a love letter to that form, even if the subject is the violence books have endured.” Bibliophobia: The End and the Beginning of the Book
The Pulsing Innards of Jack Skelley, Emily Ann Zisko, LA Review of Books, 3/6/24: “Like its source material, the stage adaptation of Jack Skelley’s Fear of Kathy Acker is not for the easily daunted. Skelley’s novel, written in installments for an alt-lit punk mag in the 1980s, was rereleased by Semiotext(e) last year to the cult-like acclaim of young ladies and gentlethems of the alt-literati.”
World Book Day finds children are put off reading for pleasure: Annual event to encourage young readers has revealed research finding that significant numbers feel discouraged from following their own tastes, Ella Creamer, The Guardian, 3/7/24: “Children have told us that they think that reading choices are judged by the adults around them. It discourages them, it puts them off reading for pleasure and by choice.”
‘The internet is an alien life form’: how David Bowie created a market for digital music: Bowie’s 1999 album Hours… was the first to go on sale online before hitting regular stores – and his experimentation caused horror in the music industry, Eamonn Forde, The Guardian, 3/5/24: “Do you want to just skip to tomorrow today? Or do you want to keep living in yesterday until it suffocates you?”
Library cuts and teachers quitting: Texas’s takeover of Houston schools: Staff call for removal of state-appointed superintendent amid 600 teachers resigning and implementation of rigid curriculum, Michael Sainato, The Guardian, 3/5/24
Film studio from Oscar-winning director aims to stir up ‘populist anger’ over climate crisis: Yellow Dot Studios produces short-form videos to inform with ‘genuine, righteous anger’ and ‘laugh-out-loud comedy,’ Dharna Noor, The Guardian, 3/9/24
17th-Century Dildo Shopping with the Ladies: On the Contested Terrain of Early Modern Desire: the History of Female Self-Pleasure, Annabelle Hirsch, LitHub, 3/6/24: “The sex-toy business seems to have experienced a small boom in the seventeenth century: dildos were produced in greater numbers and various materials; some could be filled with liquid to simulate ejaculation.”
Revisiting the Radical Presence of Diane di Prima: on the Work and Legacy of the San Francisco Beat Poet, Liesl Schwabe, LitHub, 3/4/24: “Now, I see her work as far more radical for the consistent and reassuring love she had for herself and her own presence.”
Left to themselves people
grow their hair.
Left to themselves they
take off their shoes.
Left to themselves they make love
sleep easily
share blankets, dope & children
they are not lazy or afraid…
—from “Revolutionary Letter #4,” Diane DiPrima
Politics, Economics, Technology
Not Dead Yet: The old man gets his dander up — and delivers, Andrew Sullivan, Weekly Dish, 3/8/24: “Yes, he did. That’s the core headline. Biden had to convince the American public, and to some extent the world, that he retains the vigor and marbles of his former self. And this he largely accomplished.”
Reminder: Trump’s Last Year in Office Was a National Nightmare, Paul Krugman, NY Times, 3/7/24: “There’s no real question that thousands of Americans died unnecessarily because of Trump’s dereliction of duty in the face of Covid-19.”
The Supreme Court Once Again Reveals the Fraud of Originalism: The justices did not want to throw Trump off the ballot, and so they didn’t, Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, 3/4/24: “This case reveals originalism as practiced by the justices for the fraud it actually is: a framework for justifying the results that the jurists handpicked by the conservative legal movement wish to reach. Americans should keep that in mind the next time the justices invoke originalism to impose their austere, selective vision of liberty on a public they insist must remain gratefully silent.”
The Constitution Turned Upside Down: Any account of Trump v. Anderson should lead with the fact that the Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that an insurrectionist will remain on the presidential ballot, Sean Wilentz, NY Review of Books, 3/6/24: “But the brazenness with which the majority exercised its power to reach a decision in flagrant contradiction of the Constitution’s plain meaning has deeper significance. It offers final proof, if any more were needed, that textualism and originalism, the doctrines on which conservatives have long based their judicial philosophy, are nothing but instruments of right-wing activism to produce prearranged outcomes.
The Plutocrats’ Plot To Control America: Under the banner of voting reform, a tycoon’s plan could give the rich even more power to buy elections, Amos Barshad, The Lever, 3/5/24: “Unite America, a “philanthropic venture fund” dedicated to radically reshaping the way we elect our public officials.”
The "Civil War" Was an Insurrection: The threat posed by Trump and the MAGA movement, like the Confederate States, is not “conservative” or even “extremist” but criminally anti-democratic, Michael Podhorzer, Weekend Reading, 3/4/24: “The leaders of what I call the Red Nation, which has 10 of the 11 Confederate states at its core, consistently reveal that they do not recognize the legitimacy of the United States.
The Saudi & Putin Scheme for Screwing Biden's Election Hopes: So, get ready: it’s coming this fall. And unless the administration acts quickly, there will be nothing they can do about it. Gas at $6 a gallon could easily throw the election to Trump…Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 3/5/24
A Surreal Time in American Politics: The Toll of Mass Deception and Elite Conformity, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, 3/6/24: “…our democratic emergency is also an information emergency.”
Can Joe Biden Fight from Behind in a Rematch Against Donald Trump? As the general election is set to begin, there is a new protagonist in American politics: not the man seeking to take back the White House as retribution but its current, outwardly placid occupant, Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New Yorker, 3/6/24: “In a way that might thrill the President himself, and worry many other Democrats, the spotlight is on Biden now.”
Why the leak investigation inside the New York Times newsroom is so disturbing, Margaret Sullivan, American Crisis, 3/4/24: “It should be scrutinizing its own reporting practices, particularly with respect to the vetting of freelancers, and then reporting to its readers about the findings.”
The Intelligence Revolution, Christopher S. Penn, Almost Timely News, 3/10/24: “The problem that AI poses isn't that it's going to destroy jobs or create new jobs. That would happen with any technology as radical and transformative. The problem with AI is the speed at which it will do so.”
The Terrifying A.I. Scam That Uses Your Loved One’s Voice: A Brooklyn couple got a call from relatives who were being held ransom. Their voices—like many others these days—had been cloned, Charles Bethea, New Yorker, 3/7/24
The Scariest Part About Artificial Intelligence: Between its water use, energy use, e-waste, and need for critical minerals that could better be used on renewable energy, A.I. could trash our chances of a sustainable future, Liza Featherstone, New Republic, 3/6/24: “A.I. threatens our clean energy transition, not only because of its massive energy use, though that’s one obvious reason, but also because of the carbon-intensive materials it demands, including concrete, aluminum, rare earth—and lithium.”
Covert racism in LLMs: Shocking new paper with potentially serious implications, Gary Marcus, Marcus on AI, 3/5/24: “… the LLM companies should recall their systems until they can find an adequate solution. This cannot stand. I have put up a petition at change.org, and hope you will consider both signing and sharing.”
Netanyahu ‘hurting Israel more than helping’ it, says Biden: In MSNBC interview US president says Rafah offensive would be a ‘red line’ but he would not cut off weapons funding, Johannes Lowe, The Guardian, 3/10/24
Empathy Doesn't Scale: A Team Human conversation with artist/activist Mushon Zer-Aviv, Douglas Rushkoff, Newsletter, 3/6/24: “The idea is we call it “two states, one homeland.” The idea is that there are two different states with different citizenships and so on, but with open borders and shared institutions. It's based on a confederate model rather than a complete separation.”
The best I ever wrote was in an attic.
No chair. Manual typewriter on an upended box.
No screen on the lone window, which I removed.
Bats flew through.
—from “Ballad from the Soundhole of an Unstrung Guitar,” Diane Seuss
Science, Environment
Study of slowly evolving ‘living fossils’ reveals key genetic insights: Yale researchers have discovered evidence of why a fish group, considered “living fossils,” has existed largely unchanged for tens of millions of years, Mike Cummings, Yale News, 3/4/24: “It is the oldest identified parental split among all animals, plants, and fungi that produce viable, fertile hybrids, beating the previous record holder — two fern species — by about 60 million years, according to the study.”
Oldest known animal sex chromosome evolved in octopuses 380 million years ago: Result reveals for the first time how some cephalopods determine sex, Carissa Wong, Nature, 3/4/24: “Sex determination in cephalopods, such as squids and octopi, was a mystery — we found the first evidence that genes are in any way involved.”
Mapping the Ocean’s Motion Energy: The ocean is a central component of Earth’s climate system. It is in perpetual motion, though, and understanding the transfer of kinetic energy is key to better ocean models, Veronika Meduna, Eos, 3/5/24
What is ‘embodied carbon’? It’s a little-known but major factor in the carbon footprint of our buildings, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 3/5/24: “Embodied carbon is really all those upfront emissions that happen during the harvesting, extraction, transportation, and then installation of materials that go into buildings.”
Cities Aren’t Prepared for a Crucial Part of Sea-Level Rise: They’re Also Sinking: Coastal land is dropping, known as subsidence. That could expose hundreds of thousands of additional Americans to inundation by 2050, Matt Simon, Wired, 3/6/24
Alabama Supreme Court IVF Ruling Renews Focus on Plastics, Chemical Exposure and Infertility: Endocrine-disrupting chemicals are making it harder for people to reproduce, driving some toward in vitro fertilization. Now, they are threatened by Republican and anti-abortion politics, James Bruggers, Lee Hedgepeth, Inside Climate News, 3/4/24
Flower farms could clean up polluted waterways, scientists show: Experiments showed that floating cut-flower farms work like natural wetland plants soaking up excess phosphorous and nitrogen—while producing as much as 63 blooms (worth $1 each) per square meter, Warren Cornwall, Anthropocene, 3/6/24
Could ‘Microfactories’ Pave a New Path Forward for Plastic Recycling? As new research reveals how little plastic is recycled and how that waste is affecting human health, Arizona State University and Phoenix are offering what they hope will be a new solution, Wyatt Myskow, Inside Climate News, 3/6/24: ““The hope is to have multiple factories that are distributed so that you can also cut down on how much goods have to travel.”
Dammed but Not Doomed: As dams come down on the Skutik River, the once-demonized alewife—a fish beloved by the Passamaquoddy—gets a second chance at life, Moira Donovan, Hakai, 3/5/24: “Every spring, runs of alewife (siqonomeq in Passamaquoddy)—a slender, shoebox-length fish suited to charging against the current—navigate from the Atlantic Ocean to the freshwater habitats where they spawn, traveling up rivers and streams across northeastern North America.”
Elliptic Curve ‘Murmurations’ Found With AI Take Flight: Mathematicians are working to fully explain unusual behaviors uncovered using artificial intelligence, Lyndie Chiou, Quanta, 3/5/24: “Understanding elliptic curves is a high-stakes endeavor that has been central to math.”
‘Monumental’ experiment suggests how life on Earth may have started, Mark Johnson, Washington Post, 3/9/24: “Should the scientists succeed in generating an RNA that can copy itself, evolution could then proceed largely on its own.”
Solar hits a renewable energy milestone not seen since WWII: With supply chains finally open, solar provided most of the nation's new electricity capacity last year, Tik Root, Grist, 3/6/24
New Research Shows How the Meat Industry Infiltrated Universities to Obstruct Climate Policy: In this week’s The Field Report, we look at how Big Meat seeks to influence climate understanding, climate-friendly farming practices in question, and more, Grey Moran, Civil Eats, 3/6/24
How You Can Easily Delay Climate Change Today: SO2 Injection, Tomas Pueyo, Uncharted Territories, 3/5/24: “There is only one thing we can do to avoid these potentially catastrophic consequences: Cooling the Earth artificially until we get CO2 levels in hand. And the best way we know to do that is sending SO2 to the stratosphere.”
Defending the status quo is not environmentalism: In the 21st century, building things is the key to protecting nature, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 3/5/24: “Today, our biggest environmental challenges require us to build new things. Climate change requires that we build vast fields of solar panels, and the infrastructure to transmit solar power to the grid. Habitat destruction requires us to build dense cities full of high-quality infrastructure and multifamily housing, so that humans can have somewhere pleasant to live without gobbling up the wilderness.”
He thought he was the King of America
But it was just a boulevard of broken dreams
—from “Brilliant Mistake,” Elvis Costello
Health, Wellness
Women may get a bigger longevity boost from exercise than men: Whether it’s vigorous activity or muscle building, women can make big gains in longevity while doing about half the exercise that men do, Kelyn Soong, Washington Post, 3/6/24 (gift article)
Fossil fuels and petrochemicals may be making us sicker, research says: “These chemicals may be invisible, but they are having visible impacts,” Cami Ferrell, Daily Climate, 3/8/24
Microscopic plastics could raise risk of stroke and heart attack, study says: Scientists link tiny particles in blood vessels with substantially higher risk of death, Ian Sample, The Guardian, 3/6/24
Blocking a Single Protein Could Prevent Nerve Damage Responsible For Alzheimer's, David Nield, Science Alert, 3/8/24: “When we used the drug that inhibits Mdm2 on the neurons, it completely blocked dendritic spine loss triggered by amyloid-beta. So inhibiting this protein is clearly working.”
Schizophrenia and aging may share a common biological basis: Tightly synchronized genetic changes in two types of brain cells may underlie cognitive impairment in both conditions, offering potential therapeutic clues, Allessandra DiCorato, Broad Institute, 3/6/24
Birds, Birding
Threatened in their homeland, feral Mexican parrots thrive on L.A.’s exotic landscaping, Louis Sahagun, LA Times, 3/3/24: “For reasons that are not fully understood, several hundred parrots seek evening accommodations each night in the limbs of fig and London plane trees lining a bustling stretch of Rosemead Boulevard in Temple City.”
What makes birds so smart? Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum, Phys-Org, 3/6/24: “…parrots and corvids are capable of planning for the future, forging social strategies, recognizing themselves in mirrors and building tools. These and similar aptitudes put them on a par with chimpanzees.”
The Magic of Bird Brains: Crows are smart enough to pick up trash. Why won’t they? Ben Crair, New Yorker, 3/5/24: “…crows not only retain long-term memories but also learn from their peers and pass behaviors from one generation to the next.”
I am somewhat amazed to note that this is Issue #200 of The Weird Times!
It feels like the coming months are going to be more weird, terrifying and strange than ever, if that is possible. As it happens, I’m currently reading How to Steal a Presidential Election. I suppose if you want to worry about the next election, this is a pretty good book to read. But even while the political news dominates our lives, climate and environment are affecting us in a myriad of ways, and we need to know what is happening and how we can do something about that too.
We have to keep on living our lives through all of this, and we need to experience poetry, art, music, families and friendships to have any chance of making sense of it all.
And that’s basically what this effort is about. It took me awhile to figure out a workable format for this newsletter, and it will probably continue to evolve over time. So I hope TWT can continue to be useful to as many of you as possible. It certainly helps me make it through each day, each week, and hopefully, beyond.
Wherever you are, whoever you are with, whatever you are doing — thanks for who you are and what you do. Please continue to keep in touch. Send messages and news.
Above all, stay well; share love; work for good. We need each other, now more than ever.
Love from here—David