The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 76, October 24, 2021 (V2 #24)
Bearing the Light
Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appearrs, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds — the indivisible shared out in endless abundance.
—Denise Levertov (October 24, 1923-December 20, 1997)
“A curriculum that talks about individual courage and integrity while erasing the majority of us, as well as the rules that enable us to have a say in our government by voting, is deliberately untethered from national democratic principles.
It gives us a school that does not dare take a position on the Holocaust.”—Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 10/16/21
“We are the heirs and trustees…of a tradition that goes back to Lincoln, Madison, and, yes, our friend John McCain,” Senator King reminded his colleagues. “All of them were partisans… but all shared an overriding commitment to the idea that animates the American experiment, the idea that our government is of, by, and for the people…. Now is the moment that we’re called upon to reach beyond our region, our state, our party, ourselves to save and reinvigorate the sputtering flame of the American idea.”
“Indeed,” he said, “destiny has placed us here at one of history’s fateful moments. Our response to it will be our most important legacy…. I believe we all know our responsibility, and whether we like it or not, history will record whether we, each of us, meets that responsibility.”—Maine Sen. Angus King, speech to the Senate, 10/18/21
The undercurrent of American history
has been the running aches and pains
of the worn path to the door of the apothecary
to fetch cannabis and cocaine elixirs
by the gallon.
— from “Ode on the Facelifting of the "statue" of Liberty” by Ed Dorn (1986)
The Big Stories
U.S. women are largely dissatisfied with how they’re treated. Most men don’t see a problem: The Gallup poll also found that fewer Black women and Hispanic women were satisfied with women’s treatment compared to White women, Janay Kingsberry, The Lily, 10/19/21
“Gallup’s findings underscore how men and women view gender equity issues differently in the United States, said Radhika Balakrishnan, a professor of women’s gender and sexuality studies at Rutgers University, adding that male privilege can often distort men’s perception of gender disparities.
…It’s also crucial to factor in the different lived experiences of women, Balakrishnan said. These issues are “gendered, but also racialized. With the intersection of race and gender in terms of women of color, it’s even worse,” she added.”
Trailblazing women who broke into engineering in the 1970s reflect on what’s changed – and what hasn’t, Laura Ettinger, The Conversation, 10/20/21
“In 1970, the percentage of women majoring in engineering was less than 1%. In 1979, that number was 9%. Many hoped women would continue to enter the field at the same rate. But that’s not what happened. Today, only 21% of engineering majors are women, a number largely unchanged since 2000.”
White Men, Land, and Literature: The Making (and Unmaking) of an American Pastoral, Brad Kessler, LitHub, 10/20/21
“What haunts American land haunts its literature. Every pastoral, like every paradise, implies exclusion, the things left out of Eden. How can any outgrowth from American soil not be touched by the two elements underlying its culture: genocide and slavery? Who inherits the land (and who doesn’t) and how it will be used is the subtext of America’s earliest literature. Benjamin Franklin, America’s “first writer,” sold thousands of broadsides and books while at the same time encouraging the extermination and replacement of America’s native people with White people—“cultivators of the soil.”” (Brad Kessler’s novel North is available now)
Both these findings are from the Grinnell College National Poll, reported 10/20/21.
Growing Food and Latino Culture in Tucson’s Barrio Centro: T-shirt entrepreneurs-turned-farmers are turning an abandoned elementary school into a community hub, Lourdes Medrano, Yes!, 10/12/21
“The idea of growing food, being sustainable, has been a trend for some time in predominantly White, middle-class communities,” Robles says. “For communities in the barrio, communities of color, those trends don’t reach us as easily.”
Cities' Answer to Sprawl? Go Wild: Urban forests, plant-festooned buildings and other ‘rewilding’ efforts can help bolster climate resilience, biodiversity, even moods, Chris Malloy, Bloomberg, 10/22/21
“These spaces can be as small as an outdoor feral cat shelter (like those Adams’s firm built in a Chelsea, Massachusetts, junkyard). They can be as urban as Manhattan’s High Line, a 1.5-mile park built on an elevated, abandoned railway above city blocks, or Germany’s Mauerpark, constructed along a stretch of what was once the Berlin Wall. They can be as big as a 560-acre native forest, penned in by an 8.6-kilometer mesh fence, in Wellington, New Zealand. More than a dozen native wildlife species have returned to the Wellington forest, Zealandia, since the early rewilding initiative was completed in 1999.”
How Catherine Raven Got Lucky Enough to Befriend a Wild Fox, Otherppl with Brad Listi, LitHub, 10/21/21
“If you have a population where your females are engaging in behavior that’s not evolutionarily stable, the population’s probably dwindling. I mean, just look at humans. Males engage in lots of behavior that’s not really evolutionarily stable—tooling around town on those Harleys and drinking too much beer and that sort of thing. Females are just the more stable species. And hanging out with a human, that’s really risky. He was willing to take the risk to hang out with a dangerous person because he was a male, and it was in the daytime, and he had this regular schedule.”
Think big on climate: the transformation of society in months has been done before: The astonishing story of how the US entered the second world war should be on everyone’s minds as Cop26 approaches, George Monbiot, The Guardian, 10/20/21
“The difference between 1941 and 2021 is that now the mobilisation needs to come first. We need to build popular movements so big that governments have no choice but to respond to them, if they wish to remain in office. We need to make politicians understand that the survival of life on Earth is more important than their ideological commitment to limited government. Preventing Earth’s systems from flipping means flipping our political systems.
So what is our Pearl Harbor moment? Well, how about now?”
Forget Your Carbon Footprint. Let’s Talk about Your Climate Shadow. To truly evaluate your impact on the environment, you have to go way beyond recycle bins and energy bills, Emma Pattee, The Mic, 10/12/21
“I visualize my climate shadow being made of three parts: my consumption, my choices, and my attention. My consumption would incorporate my lifestyle expectations, like running the air conditioner all summer or desiring two-day shipping when I shop online, as well as my participation in consumer culture (posting about new purchases on Instagram, spending money that goes toward a company or supply chain that is sustainable long-term) and, yes, my carbon footprint. My choices would include how I donate and invest my money, the number of children and pets I have, and what kind of company I work for and the kind of work I do for them. My attention is probably the most nebulous, yet perhaps the most important: How much of my attention is focused on the climate crisis? How many hours am I devoting to climate action? Is it at least as much as I spend watching Netflix, planning my next vacation, or taking a barre class?”
Smiling in the Metaverse, Mark Hurst, Creative Good, 10/22/21
“It brings to mind Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity, which I came across in this Sprouts video (well worth watching; transcript is also on that page). As Bonhoeffer writes in a letter from prison:
[U]nder the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances.
It’s worth reflecting on where the “rising power” is in today’s world. Silicon Valley monopolies are following Bonhoeffer’s description exactly, building platforms to control people, to “deprive [them] of their inner independence.””
The Technopolar Moment: How Digital Powers Will Reshape the Global Order, Ian Bremmer, Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 2021
“Today’s biggest technology firms have two critical advantages that have allowed them to carve out independent geopolitical influence. First, they do not operate or wield power exclusively in physical space. They have created a new dimension in geopolitics—digital space—over which they exercise primary influence. People are increasingly living out their lives in this vast territory, which governments do not and cannot fully control.
The implications of this fact bear on virtually all aspects of civic, economic, and private life.”
The Supply Chain Story Everyone is Missing: The deeper cause is too much offshoring and too little domestic production, Robert Kuttner, American Prospect, 10/20/21
“We cannot fix this crisis by adding to port capacity or working longshoremen and truckers overtime. It is a systemic failure, rooted in too much corporate power and too much faith in markets, deregulation, and hyper-globalism—the cocktail otherwise known as neoliberalism. Bring jobs and supplies home, restore some regulation, and the supply chain crisis goes away.”
Birds and Mini Golf Merge In Chicago's Douglass Park: A golf course designed by teens raises awareness about Windy City bird life while creating a safe space for neighbors, Carlyn Kranking, Audubon, 10/20/21
Viking Artifacts Give Precise Date for Europeans’ Earliest Presence in North America: New analysis of wooden artifacts shows Viking voyagers were living in Newfoundland as far back as 1021, Robert Lee Hotz, Wall Street Journal, 10/20/21
“The finding represents “the first, earliest evidence for Europeans in the Americas and the first evidence that the Atlantic has been crossed in all of human history,” said Michael Dee, an expert on dating techniques at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the senior author of a paper about the finding published Wednesday in the journal Nature.”
Forrest Gander on Grief, Translation, and Sharing Joy in Times of Suffering: In Conversation with Paul Holdengräber on The Quarantine Tapes, LitHub, 10/19/21
Flute Song
Little scavenger away,
touch not the door,
beat not the portal down,
cross not the sill,
silent until
my song, bright and shrill,
breathes out its lay.
Little scavenger avaunt,
tempt me with jeer and taunt,
yet you will wait to-day;
for it were surely ill
to mock and shout and revel;
it were more fit to tell
with flutes and calathes,
your mother’s praise.
—H.D.
Climate
The Key Insight That Defined 50 Years of Climate Science: A climate scientist has won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the first time. It’s a reminder that the field, which emerged from the mid-20th century’s biggest questions, hasn’t always been fraught, Robinson Meyer, Atlantic, 10/20/21
“In the 1950s, a team of American scientists started trying to describe the climate not as a set of elegant Einsteinian equations, as had been tried by the researchers before them, but as a matrix of thousands of numbers that could affect one another. This brute-force approach was borrowed from work by John von Neumann, a physicist who had used it to investigate atomic explosions. Applied to climate, it was immediately successful, producing the first short-term weather forecasts and later the first general circulation models of the atmosphere.”
Ben Santer on ‘separating’ and his ‘small part’ in understanding of climate science: A leading scientist's first-person report on three decades of pioneering climate science research and communication. And tributes from seven of his peers, Benjamin Santer, Yale Climate Connections, 10/12/21
“When ignorance and alternative facts are elevated in public discourse, it’s critically important for scientists to speak science to power. To declare in public what they’ve learned, how they’ve learned it, and why that understanding matters. Remaining silent is not an option when well tested science is presented as unsettled or incorrectly dismissed as a hoax.”
Earth Could Become Alien to Human Life by 2500: Unless CO2 emissions drop significantly, global warming will make the Amazon barren, the American Midwest tropical, and India too hot to live in by 2500, according to a team of scientists, Shirley Cardenas-McGill, Futurity.org, 10/15/21
“We need to envision the Earth our children and grandchildren may face, and what we can do now to make it just and livable for them,” says Christopher Lyon, a postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of professor Elena Bennett at McGill University. “If we fail to meet the Paris Agreement goals, and emissions keep rising, many places in the world will dramatically change.”
The scientists ran global climate model projections based on time dependent projections of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations for low, medium, and high mitigation scenarios up to the year 2500. Their findings, published in Global Change Biology, reveal an Earth that is alien to humans.”
From Homes to Cars, It’s Now Time to Electrify Everything: The key to shifting away from fossil fuels is for consumers to begin replacing their home appliances, heating systems, and cars with electric versions powered by clean electricity. The challenges are daunting, but the politics will change when the economic benefits are widely felt, Saul Griffith, Yale Environment 360, 10/19/21
As Jane Goodall grieves climate change, she finds hope in young people's advocacy, Nell Clark, KAZU.org, 10/18/21
Technology saves us: Oxford sees a $26 trillion gain from net zero: Decarbonisation is no global burden, but a bonanza for those quick to seize it, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph, 10/20/21
Colorado organization helps communities plan for a future without coal: The state expects all but one of its coal plants to close within the decade, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 10/21/21
How Much Did Ancient Land-Clearing Fires in New Zealand Affect the Climate? A new study adds to the evidence that forest clearing and the spread of agriculture affected the Earth’s atmosphere and temperature earlier than previously believed, Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News, 10/21/21
‘Forever chemicals’ trigger first fish consumption warning in Chesapeake region: Contamination of Piscataway Creek tied to firefighting foam at Joint Base Andrews, Timothy B. Wheeler, Bay Journal, 10/19/21
How Airborne Microplastics Affect Climate Change: Like other aerosols, these tiny particles scatter and absorb sunlight, influencing Earth’s temperature, Andrea Thompson, Scientific American, 10/21/21
To Stop Line 3 Across Minnesota, an Indigenous Tribe Is Asserting the Legal Rights of Wild Rice: In the first “rights of nature” case filed in a U.S. tribal court, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe is hoping to establish precedent in support of an unorthodox but growing legal movement, Katie Surma, Inside Climate News, 10/22/21
Climate pollution from plastics to outpace coal emissions in US by 2030, report finds: The petrochemical industry has found a new market for fossil fuels: plastics, Elizabeth Gribkoff, The Daily Climate, 10/22/21
Rising Arctic Temperatures Mean Migrating North No Longer Worth It for Many Species, Study Finds, Yale Environment 360, 10/21/21
Video: Carolina Tribe Fighting Big Poultry Joined Activists Pushing Administration to Act on Climate and Justice: Indigenous and climate activists marched from the White House to Congress to the Department of the Interior during week-long demonstrations, Aman Azhar, Inside Climate News, 10/19/21
Women do more to tackle climate change than men: Survey: Many women report changing their behavior to reduce emissions, finds Women’s Forum barometer, Lewis Westendrop, Politico, 10/19/21
‘We’re Taking Action Into Our Own Hands’ — A Community Stands Against a Landfill: Long Island residents and their allies seek environmental justice after decades of pollution, Erica Cirino, The Revelator, 10/13/21
The Power of Electric Bike Libraries: Climate-friendly e-bikes are a key part of plans to decarbonize urban transportation. To speed adoption, more cities are offering lending programs that can expose more riders to this new mode, Laura Bliss, Bloomberg, 10/15/21
They Blinded Me with Science
CERN Just Took One Step Closer to Confirming a New Force in Physics: Say your goodbyes to the old standard model, Brad Bergan, Interesting Engineering, 10/20/21
“Earlier this year, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) released new and exciting evidence that hinted at a new force in physics. Now, after months of deliberation, CERN's colossal particle collider has taken one step closer to confirming this world-historical finding, according to a recent study shared on a preprint server.
While the new results of the recent study still need to complete the process of peer review, we could be nearing the end of the Standard Model as we know it. So say your goodbyes.”
COVID vaccine makers brace for a variant worse than Delta: Companies are updating vaccines and testing them on people to prepare for whatever comes next in the pandemic, Emily Walz, Nature, 10/20/21
The coronavirus is still mutating. But will that matter? ‘We need to keep the respect for this virus:’ A drop in infections offers hope that the end of the pandemic is in sight. The virus may have something to say about that, Joel Achenbach, Ben Guarino, Aaron Steckelberg, Washington Post, 10/18/21
Gene Therapy Is Coming of Age: Various approaches are approved for treating blood cancers and a few rare disorders—they may soon become standard care, Lauren Gravitz, Scientific American, Nov 2021
This Protein Predicts a Brain’s Future After Traumatic Injury: A blood test of “NfL” proteins answers questions about damage severity that doctors—and families—desperately need, Max G. Levy, Wired, 10/21/21
Scientists gain new understanding of how brain cells talk - which could help in the treatment of mental health conditions and memory diseases, Univ of Nottingham, Science Daily, 10/18/21
Epigenetics, the misunderstood science that could shed new light on ageing, Laura Spinney, The Guardian, 10/10/21
Christian
Fundamentalists,
and fundamentalists
in general,
are viruses,
and they're killing us,
multiplying
and mutating,
and they're destroying us,
now, you know,
you got to give
strong medicine
to combat
a virus.
—from “Just Say No to Family Values,” John Giorno
He’s a poet and the FBI know it: how John Giorno’s Dial-a-Poem alarmed the Feds: After receiving hundreds of thousands of calls, the poet’s project almost broke the New York telephone exchange – leading to an FBI investigation. Will it cause similar chaos in the Instapoet era? Ralf Webb, The Guardian, 10/18/21
How a lie becomes respectable, step by cowardly step, Fred Hiatt, Washington Post, 10/17/21
“How does a lie become respectable? Bit by bit, step by step, cowardly dodge by cowardly dodge.”
There really is a bottom, and we've arrived, Lucian K. Truscott IV, Newsletter, 10/20/21
“If a democracy that has a constitution with a strict separation between church and state like ours has anything that’s “sacred,” it is the right to vote.
But the Republican-dominated Supreme Court and Republicans in the House and the Senate have never believed in the right to vote. It’s true that they believe in the right of certain people to vote for certain people. They believe in the freedom not to do stuff like wear masks and get vaccinated. When it comes to the freedoms that truly make us free, however, like the freedom to walk into a voting booth and vote for whoever you want, forget about it. Fifty Republican Senators proved that today.”
And I ain't got no brains and I ain't got no heart,
It's just them other humans tear my soul apart.
I'm a scarecrow person,
Have I got quite some message for you.
For if we don't start learning well,
We're all gonna wind up scarecrow people too!
—from “Scarecrow People,” XTC, written by Andy Partridge
“Poor people know poor people, and rich people know rich people. It is one of the few things La Rochefoucauld did not say, but then La Rochefoucauld never lived in the Bronx.” —Moss Hart (Born October 24, 1904, died December 20, 1961)
“One does not wait for the "ripe" objective circumstances to make a revolution, circumstances become "ripe" through the political struggle itself.” —Slavoj Žižek
That we are witnessing an organized, planned slow-motion coup against American democracy finally has begun to be discussed more openly in the media. It’s our responsibility as active citizens to stand up now before it is too late. Please share articles about voting rights, talk to your friends and family, and do not allow what the right is doing every day to go unnoticed or unopposed. It does not seem our leaders are able to resist what is happening—the tools of democracy being used to subvert democracy itself.
Which brings me to a key matter of concern facing The Weird Times. Every week it seems I find more articles and stories I want to share. There is a length limit in the Substack platform that I regularly want to exceed. I’ve thought of two solutions: I can start publishing two smaller issues each week, or I can focus each issue on fewer stories, rotating subjects weekly.
I’d like to find out which approach you prefer (if either - maybe you prefer TWT the way it is), or if you have a better idea, please let me know by email or through the comments here. Thanks for reading these rants and raves. Love and best wishes to all. — David
David, In searching old emails, I realize I missed this issue for comment. I don't think 2 weekly issues is a solution. AS IS is pretty good. True, I don't read everything but I can pick and choose. Most of us reading TWT are also reading other weekly newsletters. It's tremendous commitment on your part and a great gift to us. Thank you.
Thanks Summer and especially for your kind words. I have had only a few responses to this question and I did decide to try to be a more diligent editor rather than going to the trouble of making and administering two newsletters, which seems a burden not just on me, but on readers who are already overwhelmed with too much input.