The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 106, May 22, 2022 (V3 #2)
“Reagan began the process of dismantling the New Deal government, and its achievement seems now to be at hand.”—Heather Cox Richardson
“In the wake of the mass shooting in Buffalo on Saturday, it’s become glaringly obvious that my party no longer represents conservative values but in fact poses a threat to them—and to America.”—Miles Taylor
“Tesla is not an automotive story, it is a celebrity story,” —E.W. Niedermeyer, Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors
Still Roe-in
“There Is No Good News Around Roe in 2022”: Alison Leiby on Performing Oh God, a Show About Abortion. In her 70-minute one-woman show, Leiby ruminates on what happened when she found out she was pregnant while on tour in Missouri in 2019, Marissa Meltzer, Vanity Fair, 5/16/22
‘We need to stand up’: Democrats criticized for inaction on abortion: Even as Democrats have denounced the supreme court’s leaked abortion opinion, their efforts at the federal level have failed to live up to their rhetoric, Joan E. Greve, The Guardian, 5/17/22
Online data could be used against people seeking abortions if Roe v. Wade falls, Nora MacDonald, The Conversation, 5/16/22: “Anyone in a state where abortion becomes illegal who relies on the internet for information, products and services related to reproductive health would be subject to online policing.”
Indigenous and Alaska Native women could face escalated violence if Roe is repealed: They are also two to three times more likely to die as a result of pregnancy than white women, according to the CDC, Hallie Golden, The Guardian, 5/19/22
Putting Choice on the Ballot: In some key states, voters can use initiatives and referendums to secure choice and boost Democrats in November, Harold Meyerson, American Prospect, 5/19/22
More Politix
Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice, pressed Ariz. lawmakers to help reverse Trump’s loss, emails show, Emma Brown, Washington Post, 5/20/22
Democratic Voters Deliver Stinging Rebuke to Party’s Manchin-Sinema Wing: Voters shrugged off an obscene amount of spending from super PACs to send a message to Democrats: Do something, Ryan Grim, The Intercept, 5/18/22
Dem Voters Want Dem Pols Who Do Things: The Joe Manchin wing of the party lost big on Tuesday, Alexander Sammon, American Prospect, 5/18/22
The man who could rig the 2024 election, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 5/18/22: “Mastriano is one of the most radical gubernatorial candidates ever to receive a major party nomination.”
After Quitting, Election Official Has Grim Warning About A Future Of More Big Lies, Matt Shuham, Talking Points Memo, 5/19/22
Say it clearly: Republicans just nominated a pro-Trump insurrectionist, Greg Sargent, Washington Post, 5/18/22
Democracy is at stake in the midterms. The media must convey that: We journalists have to try harder and find new ways to convey to voters how badly things could turn out, Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post, 5/15/22
Summer Lee, Declaring Victory in Pennsylvania, Puts Dark Money Democrats on Notice: The United Democracy Project, a super PAC for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, poured millions to defeat Lee in a Pennsylvania House primary. Similar dark money groups have targeted several progressives, Abigail Tracy, Vanity Fair, 5/19/22
The Buffalo Shooter Isn’t a ‘Lone Wolf.’ He’s a Mainstream Republican: The right-wing extremists who control the modern GOP are all gripped by a racist delusion. The shooter is just the latest to act on it, Talia Lavin, Rolling Stone, 5/16/22
From Jim Crow to Buffalo, replacement theory’s trail of destruction runs across American history: White supremacy is not defined by acts of outlandish violence. It is inflicted on America’s non-white population every day, Michael Harriot, The Guardian, 5/16/22
How 4chan’s toxic culture helped radicalize Buffalo shooting suspect: Payton Gendron’s 180-page manifesto borrowed straight from the site’s politics boards, echoing antisemitic and racist myths, Justin Ling, The Guardian, 5/18/22
Murder Is Downstream From Misinformation and Hate, and Everybody Knows It: Actions are tied to ideas, and if ideas are toxic, then actions can kill, David French, The Atlantic, 5/19/22
American Racism and the Buffalo Shooting: The gunman seems motivated by a vision of history, pushed by the right, in which American racism never existed and Black people are undeserving takers, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New Yorker, 5/15/22
Facebook quietly bankrolled small, grass-roots groups to fight its battles in Washington: Records show Facebook-funded American Edge backed minority interest groups, conservative think tanks and small business groups to create the appearance of opposition by grass-roots groups to antitrust regulation, Cat Zakrzewski, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Washington Post, 5/17/22
Why I love the new labor movement: The new service class needed a voice. Now it has one, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 5/17/22
Adam Mosseri Says He Wants Big Tech to Give Up Control: The head of Instagram has a vision for using Web3 to shift power from tech platforms to content creators—which he says will ultimately benefit both, Gideon Lichfield, Stephen Levy, Gilad Edelman, Wired, 5/17/22
Australia Has Mandatory Voting, and Election Days Are a Party: Imagine! Louise Scarce, Teen Vogue, 5/20/22
Supreme Court greenlights corruption, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 5/17/22. Ed. note: Know it ever more as SCROTUS” (Supreme Court Republicans of the United States)
How Section 230 Shields Platforms from Accountability for What Their Users Post: The Evolution of Free Speech on the Internet, Eric Berkowitz, LitHub, 5/19/22: “Section 230 is one of history’s most significant enablers of speech, and like speech itself it is a mixed bag.”
It looks like we're headed for a soft landing: Falling demand will hit inflation. But there will be a price, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 5/18/22
Stories of Trauma and Illness Emerge As New Federal Report Investigates Scope of Native Boarding Schools, Sara Tardiff, Teen Vogue, 5/17/22
Eco-fascism: The greenwashing of the far right: White-supremacist killers are invoking environmental concerns to justify murder. But what is eco-fascism and why are people attracted to it? Alistair Walsh, DW, 5/19/22
FBI failing to address white supremacist violence, warns former special agent: Michael German, who infiltrated white supremacist groups in the 1990s, says the FBI continues to underplay the scope of the threat, Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, 5/20/22
It Sure Sounds Like Elon Musk Decided to Become a Republican after Finding out a Story about Him Allegedly Exposing Himself to a Flight Attendant was Going Public: Musk, supposed defender of free speech, paid a woman $250,000 in a severance agreement to stay silent about how he allegedly tried to bribe her for sexual favors, Bess Levin, Vanity Fair, 5/20/22
Must Read: Jeremy Grantham warns stocks will plummet, predicts a near-term recession, and sounds the alarm on a superbubble in a new interview. Here are the 9 best quotes, Theron Mohamed, Business Insider, 5/20/22
Time
does it dry up or burn to ash?
the skin under your eyes dries first
announcing your age with the most common convention
verified by indisputable signs of decay
we are inside time’s herbarium
carefully concealed between the pages
the book of life isn’t some brochure
it’s an actual ledger
under its weight everything gets thinner
until it becomes transparent
like the fluorographic X-ray of the flower that remembers
March, 2022 —Marjana Savka (Tr. by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk)
Science
Op-Ed: The medical community is missing a major piece of the obesity puzzle: Health care practitioners and regulators need to address the chemicals in everyday products that are in part spurring the obesity crisis, Jerrold J. Heindel, Environmental Health News, 5/19/22
We need a definitive exit from our Covid-19 pandemic. Here’s the roadmap: Nasal or oral vaccines, more and better drugs, and a variant-proof coronavirus vaccine could catalyze a definitive pandemic exit, Eric Topol, The Guardian, 5/16/22
Scientist Katharine Hayhoe on running toward the climate crisis solution, connecting with hard-to-reach audiences, Ivan Semeniuk, Globe and Mail, 5/16/22
Algae-powered computing: scientists create reliable and renewable biological photovoltaic cell, Jacqueline Garget, Univ of Cambridge, 5/12/22
Puzzling Quantum Scenario Appears Not to Conserve Energy: By resolving a paradox about light in a box, researchers hope to clarify the concept of energy in quantum theory, Katie McCormick, Quanta, 5/16/22
Yes, the drought really is that bad: The Western U.S. is experiencing its longest continuous streak of dry years since 800 A.D., Theo Whitcomb, High Country News, 5/16/22
Plant species can migrate in response to climate change – by hitching rides in animal bellies But populations of animals that disperse plant seeds are declining, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 5/18/22
What the Insect Crisis Means for Food, Farming—and Humanity: Journalist and author Oliver Milman discusses the findings of his new book, how declining pollinator populations could harm vulnerable communities, and the most promising solutions, Tilda Herrera, Civil Eats, 5/19/22: The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World
Inside Clean Energy: Flow Batteries Could Be a Big Part of Our Energy Storage Future. So What’s a Flow Battery? A battery project uses a technology that could be vital for meeting the need for long-duration energy storage, Dan Gearino, Environmental Health News, 5/19/22
In a massive Chinese sinkhole, scientists find a secret forest, Maria Iati, Washington Post, 5/19/22: “… the hole, which is roughly 630 feet deep and spans more than 176 million cubic feet, could be home to previously unidentified plant and animal species.”
‘Flash droughts’ are Midwest’s next big climate threat: New research shows that dry weather is coming on more quickly than before, with little advance warning, Diana Kruzman, Grist, 5/16/22
Winter ticks wiped out nearly 90% of the moose calves scientists tracked in part of Maine last year, Kevin Miller, Esta Pratt-Kielley, Maine Public, 5/19/22
Will the James Webb Space Telescope Reveal Another Earth? The space telescope is one of the most ambitious scientific projects ever undertaken: Marcia Rieke and Nikole Lewis, two of the scientists leading JWST investigations, talk to Steven Strogatz about how it may transform our understanding of the universe, Quanta Magazine, 5/18/22
If dinosaurs hadn’t died out, humans might not be here: In “The Last Days of the Dinosaurs,” Riley Black explains why they ”needed to step off the evolutionary stage” so the age of mammals could appear, Randy Dotinga, Christian Science Monitor, 5/17/22
How taking a closer look at your family tree can help you get to grips with climate change, Flossie Kingsbury, The Conversation, 5/19/22: “…climate change is the result of two processes: industrialisation and colonialism.”
Could Google’s Carbon Emissions Have Effectively Doubled Overnight? A new report suggests that the money Big Tech companies keep in the banking system can do more climate damage than the products they sell, Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, 5/20/22
Long-hypothesized 'next generation wonder material' created: Scientists have successfully synthesized graphyne, which has been theorized for decades, Univ of Colorado, Science Daily, 5/21/22: “New research fills a longstanding gap in carbon material science, potentially opening brand-new possibilities for electronics, optics and semiconducting material research.”
Books and Arts
Artists organize to offer new visions for tackling climate change, Melanie Kloetzel, The Conversation, 5/17/22: “In the face of sluggish, nonexistent or even deliberately obstructive action by both corporate and political entities, people are stepping up to ensure we meet critical climate targets.”
The Yeehaw Papyrus: In his 1969 satire Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, Ishmael Reed married the Western to the Afrocentric vogue for Ancient Egypt, Julian Lucas, NY Review of Books, 5/15/22
How Growing Up In the Digital Age Impacts Young Minds: The Pitfalls of Plugged-In Children, Carl D. Marci, LitHub, 5/19/22: “…each hour of video content infants (age 8–18 months) watched per day was associated with a significant decrease in language acquisition.” —from Rewired: Protecting Your Brain In The Digital Age
'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, that's life
Tryna make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
You know the one that takes you to the places where all the veins meet, yeah
“Bittersweet Symphony,” The Verve, by Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Richard Ashcroft
The Universal Reading Foundation is raising money! Donate to support children from Ukraine
Birds
Bird Flu Outbreaks: When Will We Learn Our Lesson? Experts say previous outbreaks should have taught us how to avoid new ones, like the one that’s killing millions of birds right now, Erica Cirino, The Revelator, 5/18/22
A Bird’s-Eye Look at an Avian Oasis: A stunning new IMAX film highlights one of the most important regions on the continent for ducks, cranes, and many more winged visitors to the South, T. Edwards Nickens, Garden & Gun, 5/17/22
New island emerges off New Jersey coast, and endangered birds are flocking to it, Cheryl Santa Maria, Yahoo News, 5/17/22
5,000 of the World’s Smallest Penguins Swarm the Shore of an Australian Beach, Miguel Brown, Nature World News, 5/19/22
Remembering Roger Angell, Hall of Famer: In the course of a well-lived century, he established himself as the most exacting of editors, the most agile of stylists, a mentor to generations of writers, and baseball’s finest, fondest chronicler, David Remnick, New Yorker, 5/20/22
In 2019, I was honored to interview Roger for Writerscast. He was an extraordinary man whose stories were endlessly entertaining, and of course one of the best writers of our time.
A literary weekend! Dante Alighieri, Alexander Pope and Robert Creeley were born May 21; Gérard de Nerval, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Peter Matthiessen, May 22.
I Know a Man
As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, — John, I
sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what
can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,
drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.
—Robert Creeley
“There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.”—Lyndon B. Johnson
Creeley and LBJ seem a perfect juxtaposition on this unusually steamy day in Connecticut. We need “your will, your labor, your hearts” and at the same time, we have to look out where we’re going, don’t we?
Stay well, stay present, love to all. And do keep in touch. —David