The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 73, October 3, 2021 (V2 #21)
I am no better and neither are you
We are the same, whatever we do
You love me, you hate me, you know me and then
You can't figure out the bag I'm in
I am everyday people, yeah yeah
—“Everyday People” by Sly Stone (1968)
Revery
1.
I was the starlight
I was the moonlight
I was the sunset,
Before the dawning
Of my life;
I was the river
Forever winding
To purple dreaming,
I was the glowing
Of youthful Springtime,
I was the singing
Of golden songbirds,—
I was love.
—Fenton Johnson
“For my part, I’m not sure what is driving the stories that seem to paint Biden’s work as a lost cause: The recent position that Democrats are hapless? That it’s safer to be negative than positive? That our news cycle demands drama?
Whatever it is, I continue to maintain that the issue right now is not Democrats’ negotiations over the infrastructure bills—regardless of how they turn out—but that Republican lawmakers are actively working to undermine our democracy.”—Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 10/1/21
Arizona Proves Again That Trump Is the GOP’s Useful Idiot, Marc Elias, Democracy Docket, 9/27/21
“He was their useful idiot when he turned over the selection of federal judgeships to the Federalist Society. He was a useful idiot when he became the improbable candidate of the white evangelical movement. But, nowhere has his idiocy paid greater dividends for the Republican Party than in his contributions to voter suppression and undermining elections.”
Bill Kristol at The Signal:
“Trump put all his chips on the big lie about the election being stolen. It’s now become pervasive in the Republican Party. That’s an impressive—or depressing—showing of strength by Trump. It’s clever, because it’s about him—his victory being stolen. It’s about avenging an injustice done to him, and the best way really to avenge that, presumably, is to renominate and reelect him.”
For Democrats, failure is not an option. For Republicans, failure is the point, Lucian Truscott IV, Newsletter, 10/1/21
“Democrats are trying -- in the great and honorable tradition of Yesteryear, when Washington D.C. and the United States government existed to do things like protect the environment, provide healthcare to needy people, bring horrors like segregation to an end and protect people’s civil rights – to get things done that need to be done. And because of that, failure is indeed not an option.
For Republicans, on the other hand, failure is the point.”
A Threat to Our Democracy: Election Subversion in the 2021 Legislative Session, Voting Rights Lab, 9/29/21
“In this climate of distrust, a quiet but deeply disturbing legislative trend has emerged – one that threatens not just voter access but the most elemental foundations of our democracy: bills shifting the allocation of power in election administration to partisan actors, criminalizing non-partisan elections administrators and initiating sham election reviews to instill further doubt in elections.”
Miscellaneous cool stuff
The MacArthur Foundation named 25 fellows for 2021, including authors Hanif Abdurraqib, Daniel Alarcón, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Don Mee Choi, Nicole Fleetwood, Ibram X. Kendi, Monica Muñoz Martinez, Desmond Meade, Safiya Noble, Jacqueline Stewart, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.
On Baseball, Ken Griffey Sr., and Finding A Black Father's Joy: Guest Post by E. Ethelbert Miller, Poet, Writer, Teacher, and Literary Activist, Allan Shedlin, Dadvocacy, 9/30/21
“Parents pave the way for their children. Everyone dreams of their children entering the Hall of Fame. May black fathers be given back their sight.”
Electric Cars Have Hit an Inflection Point: One sign EVs are no longer the auto industry’s neglected stepchild? Norway could sell its last gas-powered car as soon as next year, Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, 9/28/21
US army to 3D print concrete buildings and bridges in disaster areas, David Hambling, New Scientist, 9/27/21
A Biological 'Time Machine' With Human Cells Can Help Reverse Cancer: Converting cancerous cells 'back into their normal state', Brad Bergan, Interesting Engineering, 9/30/21
“When you can't stop what's coming, sometimes you can start over. This seems to be the strategy in a new experimental treatment for early-stage pancreatic cancer, which involves a new "time machine" from Purdue University that reverses the progress of cancer before it spreads throughout the organ, according to a new study published in the journal Lab on a Chip.”
LEARNING CURVE: New brain-inspired chips could provide the smarts for autonomous robots and self-driving cars, Robert F. Service, Science, 9/30/21
“In place of standard computing architecture, which processes information linearly, neuromorphic chips emulate the way our brains process information, with myriad digital neurons working in parallel to send electrical impulses, or spikes, to networks of other neurons. Each silicon neuron fires when it receives enough spikes, passing along its excitation to other neurons, and the system learns by reinforcing connections that fire regularly while paring away those that don’t.”
Vanishing: A Bond Across Centuries: A trip to a remote Newfoundland island to visit one of the last strongholds of the extinct great auks, Daniel Hudon, The Revelator, 9/24/21
“To know where certain animals thrive is to know something special about our world. I take comfort in thinking about the penguins in Antarctica, the blue-footed boobies of the Galápagos, the Tasmanian devils, and even the star-nosed moles that live in the eastern United States and Canada. It doesn’t matter that I have never seen these animals in person. What matters to me is that they have found their place in the world, somewhere they belong.”
Scoping Out the Gulf of Mexico’s Secret Submerged Forest: Understanding what happened to this ancient forest can help us know what is coming as the sea rises again, Lina Tran, Hakai Magazine, 9/27/21
“The site’s preservation resulted from a perfect storm of conditions spanning 70,000 years. Most shorelines dating to the end of the last ice age have been eroded.”
‘Sun-powered orgasms are fantastic’: why I went to live in a desert cave: Armed with only a solar charger, a vibrator and some marijuana gummy bears, I rode out the pandemic – and my fear of spiders – in a California commune, Stephanie Theobald, The Guardian, 10/2/21
Secrets of a long and healthy life reside in your gut microbiome: How long you live and how well you age rests on many factors beyond your control, but the discovery that gut microbes play a key role means what you eat can make a difference, Scott Anderson, New Scientist, 9/29/21
Pittsburgh’s climate-friendly plan for condemned homes: In a pilot program, the city is salvaging construction materials from the buildings instead of demolishing them, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 10/1/21
Record $5bn donation to protect nature could herald new green era of giving: Philanthropists pledge to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030, as the planet’s health climbs the charity agenda, Patrick Greenfield, The Guardian, 9/29/21
DeepMind’s AI predicts almost exactly when and where it’s going to rain: The firm worked with UK weather forecasters to create a model that was better at making short term predictions than existing systems, Will Douglas Heaven, MIT Technology Review, 9/29/21
West Point Chemists Re-Create Medieval Gunpowder Recipes: Following an antique manuscript, researchers mixed up (and then blew up) some early formulations to learn how explosive-making has evolved, Eric Niiler, Wired, 9/29/21
Norway plans to move money to net-zero: The new Norwegian government announced that the countryNorway’s sovereign wealth fund, the largest public stockholder in the world, is committing to make sure that all the companies in its portfolio are targeting net-zero emissions by 2050, Maria Paula Rubiano A., Grist, 9/29/21
Bay Area high school rescues 4,000 endangered salmon from the drought - they'll grow up on campus, Tara Duggan, SF Chronicle, 9/26/21
A Tiny Bird’s Poop Could Unlock Secrets of Climate Change Adaptation, Patty Wetli, WTTW.com, 9/30/21
Planting a Life—and a Future—After Prison at Benevolence Farm: The residential and employment program on a North Carolina organic farm helps formerly incarcerated women find a new path, Stephanie Parker, Civil Eats, 9/30/21
Our farm won’t just feed us, tribe says. It’ll reclaim the lifestyle pollution stole, Jackie Roman, Michael Mancuso, NJ.com, 9/26/21
“This is what we have to do to save our people’s lives,” said Vincent Mann, Turtle Clan Chief of the Ramapough Lenape Nation and co-founder of the farm.
Gibraltar cave chamber discovery could shed light on Neanderthals’ culture: Researchers find space in Gorham’s Cave complex that has been closed off for at least 40,000 years, Sam Jones, The Guardian, 9/28/21
How a Secret Google Geofence Warrant Helped Catch the Capitol Riot Mob: A WIRED investigation has found 45 federal criminal cases that cite Google geolocation data to place suspects inside the US Capitol during the January 6 riot, Mark Harris, Wired, 9/30/21
Environment is everywhere
‘Blah, blah, blah’: Greta Thunberg lambasts leaders over climate crisis: Activist says there are many fine words but the science does not lie – CO2 emissions are still rising, Damian Carrington, The Guardian, 9/28/21
“This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words that sound great but so far have not led to action. Our hopes and ambitions drown in their empty promises.”
Carbon and caribou: why the Dene Tha’ are forging a plan to protect a northern Alberta lake: The nation is proposing the first Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area in the province to protect the region surrounding one of Alberta’ largest lakes, which stores five times more carbon per square metre than the Amazon, Sharon J. Riley, The Narwhal, 9/25/21
Silicon’s 300% Surge Throws Another Price Shock at the World, Krystal Chia, Dan Murtaugh, Mark Burton, Bloomberg News, 10/1/21
“A metal made from the second-most abundant element on Earth has become scarce, threatening everything from car parts to computer chips and throwing up another hurdle for the world economy.
The shortage in silicon metal, sparked by a production cut in China, has sent prices up 300% in less than two months.”
The COVID-19 pandemic necessitates a shift to a plastic circular economy, Xiangzhou Yuan, Xiaonan Wang, Binoy Sarkar & Yong Sik Ok, Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, 9/27/21
“The COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating plastic pollution. A shift in waste management practices is thus urgently needed to close the plastic loop, requiring governments, researchers and industries working towards intelligent design and sustainable upcycling.”
Avoiding water bankruptcy in the drought-troubled Southwest: What the US and Iran can learn from each other, Mojtaba Sadegh, Ali Mirchi, Amir AghaKouchak, Kaveh Madani, The Conversation, 10/2/21
“We believe past mistakes in the U.S. and Iran offer important lessons for future plans in the U.S. Southwest and other regions increasingly experiencing drought and water shortages.”
We’re miscalculating the cancer risk from a massive class of chemicals: MIT Study: Regulators need to look at a broader range of polycyclic aromatic carbons — and their breakdown products — to understand a community's cancer risk, Elizabeth Gribkoff, Environmental Health News, 10/1/21
Race to the bottom: the disastrous blindfolded rush to mine the deep sea: One of the largest mining operations ever seen on Earth aims to despoil an ocean we are only barely beginning to understand, Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, 9/27/21
How financial institutions engineered climate injustice and the clean energy colorline: Methods of investing, lending, and risk assessment must change to prioritize equity, Kartik Amarnarth, Environmental Health News, 9/29/21
In Arizona, Drought Ignites Tensions and Threatens Traditions Among the Hopi: The tribe has survived for more than a thousand years in the arid mesas. The megadrought gripping the Southwest is testing that resilience, Simon Romero, NY Times, 10/2/21
Major Oil Slick Reported Off Coast Near Newport Beach, Reaches Huntington Beach: An oil slick was spotted three miles off the coast of Newport Beach and is reportedly 13 miles in diameter, the U.S. Coast Guard said, Maggie Moore, NBC Los Angeles, 10/3/21
Pandemic Bird-Watching Created a Data Boom—and a Conundrum: Avid amateurs are generating a wealth of information on avian activity. But does that data reflect new trends in bird behavior, or in people’s? Sara Harrison, Wired, 9/30/21
US to resume enforcement of unlawful bird deaths by industry, Matthew Brown, Eagle Times, 9/29/21
Interior restores migratory bird protections, Michael Doyle, E&E News, 10/1/21
Ivory-billed woodpecker officially declared extinct, along with 22 other species: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s move underscores what scientists say is an accelerating rate of extinction worldwide, given climate change and habitat loss, Dino Grandoni, Washington Post, 9/29/21
It’s Politics Again
Alito defends letting Texas abortion law take effect, says Supreme Court critics want to intimidate justices, Robert Barnes, Mike Berardino, Washington Post, 9/30/21
“The catchy and sinister term ‘shadow docket’ has been used to portray the court as having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways,” Alito said. “And this portrayal feeds unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution.”
Ed: This is rich. Too rich by far. Oh those poor supreme court justices, intimidated by (hold on to your necklace!) citizens. Isn’t it terrible what the rabble does to the ruling class?
“This is injudicious conduct in which no sitting Justice should ever engage. Apart from his indefensible statements, discussing the merits of a still pending matter and attacking a critic of his vote at an earlier stage of the case was outrageous. He is acting drunk with power.” —Lawrence Tribe
Non-surprise of the week: Walmart calls for "strong climate policy now," backs campaign to kill strong climate policy, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 9/30/21
It's Banned Books Week, but the efforts to silence writers and control our thoughts and lives go on every day. There is a direct throughline from local censorship campaigns to the anti-abortion laws rising up all over America. This new Puritanism is a creation of the radical right, a tiny minority attempting to reshape America into a theocratic oligarchy.
Pass the damn infrastructure bill, dammit: Then pass the reconciliation bill, then pass another bill...Noah Smith, Noahpinions, 9/27/21
“God’s Will Is Being Thwarted.” Even in Solid Republican Counties, Hard-Liners Seek More Partisan Control of Elections, Jeremy Schwartz, ProPublica and Texas Tribune, 10/1/21
“This is an incredible delegitimization of American democracy when it comes right down to it,” said Becker, a former Department of Justice lawyer who helped oversee voting rights enforcement under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. “It is a security threat that is injecting chaos and partisanship and doubt into our election system.”
Network of Right-Wing Health Care Providers is Making Millions of Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, Hacked Data Reveals: The data also reveals that 72,000 people paid at least $6.7 million for Covid-19 consultations promoted by America’s Frontline Doctors and vaccine conspiracist Simone Gold, Micah Lee, The Intercept, 9/28/21
Banned Books Week Fights Censorship by People in Power: This op-ed argues that those who ban or burn books are seeking to destroy history, ideas, and narratives that challenge the authority of those in power, Jameelah Nasheed, TeenVogue, 9/27/21
“The books are just the vessel, and the people won’t be silent.”
Indie Booksellers Recommend: The Best of Independent Presses This September and October: Bookstores From Around the Country Pick Their Favorites, Corinne Segal, Lithub, 10/1/21
And you can support the organization that supports independent literary publishers all over the United States, the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, now more than fifty years old and going strong. Their annual fundraising gala and online auction is October 13. Buy tickets and bid on some cool items. Full disclosure, I am on the board of this excellent organization.
Voice Surveillance Must Die, Mark Hurst, Creative Good, 9/30/21
“To put it politely, smart speakers are listening to you in ways that you might not expect. A recent book explains that they are “aggressively judging people by their voices . . . few of us realize that we are turning over biometric data to companies when we give voice commands to our smartphones and smart speakers, or when we call contact center representatives.”
The book is The Voice Catchers: How Marketers Listen In to Exploit Your Feelings, Your Privacy, and Your Wallet, by Joe Turow, professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. This is the definitive account of how voice surveillance works today, and the much, much bigger threat it will pose in the future.”
Don't tell me you don't know the difference
Between a lover and a fighter
With my pen and my electric typewriter
Even in a perfect world where everyone was equal
I'd still own the film rights and be working on the sequel
—“Everyday I Write the Book” Elvis and the Attractions, written by Elvis Costello
“There is a sense that no matter how rational you try to be, and no matter how much information you seek, you’re not able to reduce uncertainty. That creates a kind of unease that is much, much worse than before.”—psychiatrist Barry Schwartz, about the latest stage of the pandemic, quoted by The Guardian (10/1/21)
“A poet’s life is dangerously boring” — David Wilk
Wishing you all the best in these contentious and challenging times. Let me know what you are reading, listening to, and doing, if you have time to write in these ongoing Times of Weirdness. Enjoy the fall—David