The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 204, April 7, 2024 (V4 #48): Here Comes the Sun! Solar Eclipse Issue
It sounded as if the Streets were running
And then—the Streets stood still—
Eclipse—was all we could see at the Window
And Awe—was all we could feel.
—Emily Dickinson
Total solar eclipse to sweep across Mexico, the US and Canada: The moon will pass directly in front of the sun, exposing ghostly traces of the sun’s atmosphere, Stuart Clark, The Guardian, 4/1/24: “A total solar eclipse will sweep across the Pacific Ocean, through Mexico, the US and Canada and end over the Atlantic Ocean on 8 April. The phenomenon occurs when the moon passes directly in front of the sun, blocking out the bright surface and revealing the ghostly traces of the sun’s atmosphere.”
NASA Explains: What is a solar eclipse? A solar eclipse happens when, at just the right moment, the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth. Learn all about solar eclipses in this video!
‘You see one, you want to see them all’: 105-year-old excited for his 13th solar eclipse: Laverne Biser has traveled the world to witness the phenomenon – and what might be his final one will pass directly over his Texas house, Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Guardian, 4/3/24
Can You View a Round Solar Eclipse Through a Square Hole? Here’s a cool way to watch the eclipse on Monday—and learn about the weird physics of light while you’re at it, Rhett Allain, The Wired, 4/5/24: “All you need is something flat like a piece of cardboard. Then you poke a hole in it with a pin.”
For the Maya, solar eclipses were a sign of heavenly clashes − and their astronomers kept sophisticated records to predict them, Kimberly H. Breur, The Conversation, 4/3/24: “Maya scribes kept accounts of the astronomical observations in codices, hieroglyphic folding books made from fig bark paper. The Dresden Codex, one of the four remaining ancient Maya texts, dates to the 11th century. Its pages contain a wealth of astronomical knowledge and religious interpretations and provide evidence that the Maya could predict solar eclipses.”
At three o’clock to feel yourself disappear inside yourself —
To cast no shadow. And – so long ago now
how did you put it? —the delicious, insistent thought
What if it stays like this? To yearn and yet not to know yet
What that yearning meant.
—from "I Tell You This Now: Family Photographs: My Brother, Solar Eclipse, 1965,” Daniel Lawless
Books, Music, Art, Culture
The Life of You Too? On Eliot Weinberger’s “The Life of Tu Fu,” Forrest Gander, LA Review of Books, 4/2/24 DW: Eliot is known for his fine essays - this is his first book of poetry.
Last autumn I saw some soldier gallop by,
his lance under his arm.
And now I suddenly wonder,
where his white bones lie.
Every day whole regiments die,
and everyone weeps, one corpse at a time.
John Barth, Writer Who Pushed Storytelling’s Limits, Dies at 93: His sprawling and boisterous novel “The Sot-Weed Factor,” published in 1960, projected him into the ranks of the country’s most innovative writers, Michael T. Kaufman, Dwight Garner, NY Times, 4/3/24: “My feeling about technique in art is that it has the same value as technique in lovemaking. That is to say, heartfelt ineptitude has its charm and so has heartless skill, but what you really want is passionate virtuosity.” (Gift article)
Neeli Cherkovski, poet and biographer, (born Nelson Cherry, July 1, 1945) has died.
I am the way I am
because nobody could convince me
to be otherwise, a simple thought
to be not so easily deterred
from the wreckage of bad behavior
—from “Hello,” Neeli Cherkovski
The Future of American Sports Isn’t Pretty: Irresponsible legislators and greedy sports leagues have led to a dangerous rise in gambling, Brendan Ruberry, Persuasion, 4/3/24: “…the gambling horse has bolted from the stable. What more havoc it will wreak, no one can tell.”
“The Beach Boys” Tell Their Own Story, Eoghan Lyng, Culture Sonar, 4/2/24: “It would be reductive to describe the new book The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys as their “Anthology,” but it nevertheless explores their career from rabble-rousers to pop writers par excellence.”
AI Has Lost Its Magic: That’s how you know it’s taking over, Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 4/4/24: “First the magic fades, then the nostalgia. This is what happens to a technology that’s taking over. This is a measure of its power.”
The Language of American Jewishness: On Delmore Schwartz, Grace Paley, and the Duties of Freedom: “I want American Jews to count ourselves in; to include ourselves in the bad parts of American history as part of building the good,” Lily Meyer, LitHub, 4/4/24: “Jews have been freer in the modern United States than just about anywhere else, and in that freedom begins responsibility.”
The unbearable necessity of being online: On loving and loathing the internet as an artist and why we need to be here anyway, Elle Griffin, The Elysian, 4/3/24: “The more I write, and the more people read what I write, the more I am exposed to people who have opinions about what I write, and the less I want to write.”
Black hole sun
Won't you come
And wash away the rain?
Black hole sun
Won't you come
—from “Black Hole Sun,” Soundgarden, written by Chris J. Cornell
Politics, Economics
Denying Russia’s Only Strategy for Success, Nataliya Bugayova, Frederick W. Kagan, Kateryna Stepanenko, Institute for the Study of War, 3/27/24: “The Kremlin needs the United States to choose inaction and embrace the false inevitability that Russia will prevail in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s center of gravity is his ability to shape the will and decisions of the West, Ukraine, and Russia itself. The Russian strategy that matters most, therefore, is not Moscow’s warfighting strategy, but rather the Kremlin’s strategy to cause us to see the world as it wishes us to see it and make decisions in that Kremlin-generated alternative reality that will allow Russia to win in the real world.”
Still Bring Us Your Tired: Bad policy and worse politics threaten the post-WWII imperative to admit victims of persecution. But in parts of America, humanitarian migration remains a cherished tradition, Dara Lind, American Prospect, 4/1/24
Trump’s bizarre, vindictive incoherence has to be heard in full to be believed: Excerpts from his speeches do not do justice to Trump’s smorgasbord of vendettas, non sequiturs and comparisons to famous people, Rachel Leingang, The Guardian, 4/6/24: “You not only see the truly bizarre nature of his speeches when viewing them in full, but you see the sheer breadth of his menace and animus toward those who disagree with him.”
Big Mad Trump and the Specter of 2025, Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, 4/4/24: “The part of the story that is still too little articulated is how Trump’s personal and legal challenges galvanized and really created the whole thing.”
The Republican party has become a full-fledged anti-sex movement: The conservative obsession with purity and control is being achieved by increasingly punitive means, Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian, 4/2/24: “It’s not a coincidence that the authoritarian right is obsessed with both the border and women’s bodies; they’d like to increase the patrolling of both, and essentially shut them both down. It’s an obsession with purity and control to be achieved by punitive and sometimes homicidally violent means. And it’s a roadmap straight back to the terrible inequality women were already campaigning against in Anthony Comstock’s time.”
When Hatred of the Left Becomes Love for Putin: There are deep ideological reasons behind conservative affinity for Russia, Cathy Young, Persuasion, 4/1/24: “They hate, more fundamentally, 21st century America: an America they see as corrupted by multiculturalism, “Third World” immigration, feminism, gay rights and sexual liberation—and dominated by “elites” that despise conservatives.”
Here’s why Americans under 40 are so disillusioned with capitalism, Heather Long, Washington Post, 4/1/24: “Young Americans have had a harsh introduction to capitalism. Even as the economy is back on strong footing, many remain deeply anxious. If business leaders want to change that, a wise place to start would be to give workers a secure retirement again, starting with Social Security.”
How to Fight Misinformation Without Censorship: Taiwan’s approach puts other countries to shame, Jacob Mchangama, Persuasion, 4/5/24: “Taiwan’s civic tech initiatives have been instrumental in defending Taiwan’s democracy and depend to a large degree on freedom of information. “Civic tech” describes informal volunteer and nonprofit initiatives building digital technology for the public good, aiming to make government more open.”
US election workers face thousands of threats – so why so few prosecutions? The justice department has a dedicated taskforce to tackle a phenomenon that barely existed before Trump unleashed his 2020 stolen election lie, Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, 3/31/24: “The difference between what is criminally actionable, and what feels like a threat to an election administrator on the ground, is an inherent problem in this space. What is potentially actionable is closer to dozens of cases, compared with the thousands of hostile communications we have received.”
We All Saw It, Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, 4/1/24: “People have gotten really, really committed to the architecture of bullshit about why what we saw doesn’t matter. But it’s accurate. And it’s grounding. A lot of the right wing media apparatus amounts to a kind of vast social gaslighting. Did you really not see it? Do you need me to show you again? I saw it. You saw it. You know that.”
Don’t Let Trump Exhaust You: This election is about fortitude and endurance, Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 4/4/24: “The Trump campaign is trying to turn the electoral process into a moral swamp. Voters are going to have to pace themselves to get to November.”
Judges and Prosecutors, Targeted by Trump, Will Not Be Intimidated: They are the latest democratic heroes of Lucid, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, 4/5/24: “Authoritarianism involves arranging government to keep the leader safe from prosecution and allow him to commit crimes and corrupt acts with impunity. That means judges and prosecutors are always among those harassed and persecuted, along with lawyers who defend dissidents or don’t fall into line with the government.”
Weapons of Mass Production: What the Industrial Revolution Was to Physical Production, the AI Revolution Is to Digital Production, Rex Woodbury, Digital Native, 4/3/24: “While the internet was a distribution revolution, AI is a production revolution. Generative AI makes it really, really easy to make stuff. It blows open the floodgates of production.”
Corporate Profit Bonanza, Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, Popular Information, 4/2/24: “In the last three months of 2023, after-tax corporate profits reached an all-time high of $2.8 trillion. This is part of a long-term growth in corporate profits that began in the 1980s, picked up steam at the turn of the millennium, and exploded since 2020.”
As Elections Loom, Congressional Maps Challenged as Discriminatory Will Remain in Place: With control of the House of Representatives hanging in the balance, the time-consuming appeals process means elections in multiple districts will take place using maps that have been challenged as discriminatory to voters of color, Marilyn W. Thompson, ProPublica, 4/4/24
The Supreme Court May Give Us Another 2008 Financial Crisis: A new case could decimate state-level consumer protections against predatory banking practices, Katya Schwenk, The Lever, 4/2/24: “Legal experts say that the case, Cantero v. Bank of America, could invalidate a host of state laws that protect people from predatory lending, junk fees, and other financial scams.”
So, What Can We Do About the Naked Corruption of the Supreme Court? Replacing Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh would take the balance of the Court back to where it was in 1973, before Nixon decided to drive Fortas out with bogus charges. There may be a way...Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 4/5/24: “Instead of trying to impeach Thomas — an almost impossible lift, given the composition of today’s Senate — the Biden administration and Democrats in the House and Senate would be better served investigating both the bribes he’s accepted as well as Ginni’s corruption and attempted sedition.”
A Humanitarian Catastrophe, Tesnim Zekeria, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 4/3/24: “Despite pressure from the international community, Israel, according to reports, has repeatedly blocked aid in an apparent violation of humanitarian law.”
Once upon a time there was light in my life
But now there's only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart
—from “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” Bonnie Tyler
Science, Technology, Environment
How the Ancient Art of Eclipse Prediction Became an Exact Science: The timing of the total eclipse on April 8, 2024, will be known to within a second, thousands of years after fearful humans first started trying to anticipate these cosmic events, Joshua Sokol, Quanta, 4/5/24
The Small Self and the Vast Universe: Eclipses and the Science of Awe, Kate Evans, Eos, 3/26/24: “What is awe? What does it feel like? Why does it exist? And what is it about a total solar eclipse that seems perfectly designed to provoke it?”
Birds, bees and even plants might act weird during the solar eclipse, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Washington Post, 3/26/24: “Reports abound of unusual animal and plant behavior during eclipses…. Sap flowed more slowly in a 75-year-old beech tree in Belgium in 1999. Orb-weaving spiders started tearing down their webs and North American side-blotched lizards closed their eyes during an eclipse in Mexico in 1991.”
The End of the Eclipse: Scientists are studying how the Earth–Moon distance has changed over time, and what effect that change might have had on our planet. Future changes will extinguish total solar eclipses entirely, Damon Benningfield, Eos, 3/26/24: “Earth and the Moon are moving away from each other, so the Moon will look smaller and smaller through the ages to come. Eventually, it will grow so small it will no longer be able to completely occult our star, and total eclipses will vanish.”
A 600-Year-Old Blueprint for Weathering Climate Change: During the Little Ice Age, Native North Americans devised whole new economic, social, and political structures, Kathleen DuVal, The Atlantic, 4/2/24: “Native North Americans instituted decentralized governing structures with a variety of political checks and balances to prevent dictatorial leaders from taking power and to ensure that all members of a society had a say.”
The new science of death: ‘There’s something happening in the brain that makes no sense:’ New research into the dying brain suggests the line between life and death may be less distinct than previously thought, Alex Blasdel, The Guardian, 4/2/24: “It is the hope that by transcending the current limits of science and of our bodies, we will achieve not a deeper understanding of death, but a longer and more profound experience of life. That, perhaps, is the real attraction of the near-death experience: it shows us what is possible not in the next world, but in this one.”
Saving a Sea Monkey Sanctuary: As the Great Salt Lake in Utah shrinks, locals are working to preserve its critical brine shrimp fishery—along with the other entities that flourish in the lake’s strange, saline beauty, Paul Greenberg, Hakai, 4/2/24
The Climate Scientist Fossil-Fuel Companies Can’t Stand: Robert Howarth’s research on natural gas exports influenced the White House and exasperated oil and gas executives, Benoît Morenne, Wall Street Journal, 3/31/24: “The oil-and-gas industry has a track record of trying to trash the reputations of scientists whose results they do not like.”
The Brazilian Special-Forces Unit Fighting to Save the Amazon: As miners ravage Yanomami lands, combat-trained environmentalists work to root them out, Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker, 4/1/24: “The feeling of fighting a losing battle is constant.”
Air Pollution Has Masked Climate Change’s Influence on U.S. Rainfall: A study suggests that high levels of aerosol pollution have offset higher precipitation levels caused by a warming climate, Katherine Bourzac, Eos, 4/2/24
I Walked the Lake in Death Valley: Wading through a warning in the hottest place on Earth, Sarah Kendzior, Newsletter, 4/2/24: “I went to Death Valley because Earth is on life support. I wanted a place where time is so vast that you don’t need to borrow it. I wanted confirmation that we are living in hell, and Death Valley delivers …. I stared at the lake and made up a story. The mourning earth had wept so hard, it made a lake of saltwater tears. I was wading in a warning. I held my son’s hand and focused on the present: the past and the future were wrapped inside it anyway.”
And all that is now
And all that is gone
And all that's to come
And everything under the sun is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon—from “Eclipse,” Pink Floyd, written by George Roger Waters
Health, Wellness
This Bag of Cells Could Grow New Livers Inside of People: Donor livers are in short supply for transplants. A startup is attempting to grow new ones in people instead, Emily Mullin, Wired, 4/2/24
First Images of Human Brain From World's Most Powerful MRI Revealed, Isabelle Tourne, Science Alert, 4/5/24: “We have seen a level of precision never reached before.”
And what would we do, given a fresh sky
And our dearth of image? Our fears, our few beliefs
Do not have shapes. They are like that astral way
We have called milky, vague stars and star-reefs
That were shapeless even to the fecund eye of myth—
Surely these are no forms to start a zodiac with.
—from “Starlight,” William Meredith
Birds, Birds, Birds
Solar eclipse could scramble bird behavior, Pat Leonard, Cornell Chronicle, 3/26/24: “Here we have this unique natural phenomenon setting up a huge ‘experiment’ for us.”
After 10 years of work, landmark study reveals new ‘tree of life’ for all birds living today, Jacqueline Nguyen, Simon Ho, The Conversation, 4/1/24: “By analysing the genomes of more than 360 bird species, our study has identified the fundamental relationships among the major groups of living birds. The new family tree overturns some previous ideas about bird relationships, while also revealing some new groupings.”
How to Build a Backyard Bird Oasis: Feathered friends will sing their praises over these native blooming vines, seed-laden flowers, and berry bushes. Plus: Tips and tricks for taking a naturalist approach to gardening, Gabriela Gomez-Misserian, Garden & Gun, 3/26/24
Navajos honor a solar eclipse by choosing not to watch, Melissa Sevigny, KNAU News, 4/4/24: “We stay humble, we stay quiet, we stay in prayer and reverence at the moment, and until the whole thing passes, we choose to fast.”
I am thinking about hope and love, family, friends and how we must stand together, lean on each other—despite all, I know that we will prevail.
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
Little darlin', it's been a long, cold, lonely winter
Little darlin', it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun
And I say, it's alright
—from “Here Comes the Sun,” by George Harrison