The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 171, August 20, 2023 (V4 #15)
Sacred Activism Is . . .a reverence for the divine and a passion for justice—Rob Brezsny
The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.—Audre Lorde
Books, Music, Art & Culture
Keith Waldrop, Professor and Award-Winning Poet, Dies at 90: He won the National Book Award for poetry in 2009, having first been nominated 40 years earlier. He also taught at Brown University for four decades, Neil Genzlinger, NY Times, 8/12/23: “Waldrop was far more than a poet. He was a well-regarded translator of French poetry and prose, as well as an artist whose collages were exhibited in solo and group shows. He also ran a small press with his wife, the poet Rosmarie Waldrop.” (Burning Deck Press).
‘They thought they were immortal’: the rise and fall of San Francisco’s 60s music scene: A new docuseries explores the ‘untold stories’ of the musicians at the centre of a creative boom and what happened when tragedy struck, Charles Bramesco, The Guardian, 8/16/23: “…with how divisive things have become now, we’re going to need another hippie movement.” San Francisco Sounds: A Place in Time
"Barbie" vs. "Oppenheimer": U.S. foreign policy has a lot to learn from this summer’s blockbusters: "Barbie" proves the benefits of matriarchy, as opposed to the dangers of an "Oppenheimer" patriarchy, Kate Alexander, Salon, 8/14/23: “I am so tired of men choosing to be hard in order to not be seen as feminine. I'm so tired of men choosing violence, emotional and physical, of excusing the violence of other men, in order to stay in the boys club. I am so tired of the gender binary reinforcing patriarchy, and of patriarchy reinforcing the gender binary. I'm so tired of men attacking women and the queer community to prove themselves to other men. I'm so tired of "girl dads" being celebrated, rather than girl dad qualities being extended to children of all genders. We all lose when these are our societal norms.”
Stakes Are High as Judge Hears Motion to Block Texas Book Rating Law, Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly, 8/18/23: “It would impose a blatantly unconstitutional ratings scheme on booksellers, forcing them to label a book with arbitrary ratings invented by the Texas legislature before being able to sell books to school libraries.”
In a small Kansas town, a brazen attack on press freedom, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 8/14/23: "These are Hitler tactics, and something has to be done." Those were the words of 98-year-old Joan Meyer, the co-owner of the Marion County Record, after her home and office were raided by the City of Marion's entire five-person police department on Friday. Experts believe the extraordinary raid, which was first reported by the Kansas Reflector, was a violation of federal law.
How Performances of Othello Can Spotlight White Supremacy, Past and Present: on Analyzing and Appreciating Shakespeare Through the Lens of Race, Farah Karim-Cooper, LitHub, 8/15/23: “Race is the very motor of this play.”
Babe Who? There has never been a ballplayer like Shohei Ohtani, Joe Posnanski, Washington Post, 8/15/23: “He truly might be the best hitter and best pitcher — at the same time. There is no precedent in Major League Baseball.”
Arkansas rejects AP African American Studies, cites Arkansas law on "prohibited topics,” Judd Legum, Tesnim Zekeria, Popular Information, 8/15/23 “Arkansas teachers and students have done extraordinary classroom work in AP African American Studies that has been celebrated in local, regional and national media, and their excellent work should be allowed to continue this school year.”
School district uses ChatGPT to help remove library books: Faced with new legislation, Iowa's Mason City Community School District asked ChatGPT if certain books 'contain a description or depiction of a sex act,’ Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 8/14/23
Why the Great AI Backlash Came for a Tiny Startup You’ve Probably Never Heard Of: A literary analytics project called Prosecraft has shuttered after backlash from the writing community. It's a harbinger of a bigger cultural tide shift, Kate Knibbs, Wired, 8/15/23: “I think that the reasons that people are upset really don't have anything to do with this poor guy. I think it has to do with everything else that’s going on.”
On the Difficulty of Getting Rid of Books: "I don’t get rid of them, per se; rather, I set them afloat, in search of new homes,” Lewis Buzbee, LitHub, 8/16/23: “…this is what I want for my books when I die, that my friends and loved ones would each take a little volume of me home with them…”
Network Effects: The Evolution of Online Communities: The Startups Facilitating Online Connection, Rex Woodbury, Digital Native, 8/17/23: “One interesting area to watch: higher-paid knowledge work going freelance. As younger people prioritize flexibility and autonomy, freelance work will grow—and that trend will seep beyond lower-wage gig work into project-based knowledge work.”
Lahaina, site of incalculable Native Hawaiian importance, reels from cultural losses: Residents hold on to hope for historic town that ‘represents transformation’ as it prepares to rebuild, Claire Wang, The Guardian, 8/15/23: “This is absolutely shattering, but we don’t find it impossible to rebuild.”
Poet
The wind dying, I find a city deserted, except for crowds of
people moving and standing.
Those standing resemble stories, like stones, coal from the
death of plants, bricks in the shape of teeth.
I begin now to write down all the places I have not been—
starting with the most distant.
I build houses that I will not inhabit.
—Keith Waldrop
Politicks
The Constitution Prohibits Trump From Ever Being President Again: The only question is whether American citizens today can uphold that commitment, J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe, Atlantic, 8/19/23: “The clause was designed to operate directly and immediately upon those who betray their oaths to the Constitution, whether by taking up arms to overturn our government or by waging war on our government by attempting to overturn a presidential election through a bloodless coup.” DW: Also reported: “a new 126-page paper by two prominent originalist law professors argues that Trump’s Jan. 6 disqualification is “automatic” and not controlled by the outcome of a congressional process or criminal trial.” DW: California may be the first state to ban Trump from the ballot. Others will - must - follow.
The peaceful transfer of power, Steve Schmidt, The Warning, 8/18/23: “It is important to understand the desecration and chaos Trump and his mob have wrought with their attack against America…The treachery is historic, unprecedented and ongoing.”
Trump's Crimes Against Democracy Tower Way Above His 4 Indictments: There’s a deeper truth here: the Trump/MAGA faction of the GOP hasn't just committed electoral crimes -- they've declared war on democracy itself…Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 8/17/23: “While it may be satisfying to call Trump and his enablers “fascists,” there’s a deeper truth here, with which America must come to terms: the Trump/MAGA faction of the GOP has declared war on democracy itself.”
Why the Georgia Indictment Against Donald Trump and His Allies Is the Most Sweeping Yet: If Donald Trump is found guilty of racketeering charges in Georgia, he cannot count on getting pardoned out of a jail sentence, Eric Lutz, Vanity Fair, 8/15/23
Trump has no serious first amendment defense in a court of law. Here’s why: Words that criminal defendants have written or spoken are used against them all the time. Perhaps you’ve heard of a confession? Laurence H Tribe, Dennis Aftergut, The Guardian, 8/14/23: “The law puts it this way: “Speech integral to criminal conduct” is not protected speech.”
Did Barbie Speed Up the Collapse of Trump’s Macho-Based Hate Movement? Whether it’s Barbie or the Trump prosecutions that have brought about what feels like a sea-change in the American zeitgeist — or the combination of them both around the same time — I’ll take it! Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 8/18/23
How Republicans overhype the findings of their Hunter Biden probe, Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, 8/17/23: “Comer would have more credibility if he stuck to documented facts — such as saying precisely that Hunter Biden received $7 million from foreign sources. He earns Three Pinocchios.”
China's crash is unlikely to hurt the global economy (much): There are some vulnerabilities, but the good will mostly balance out the bad, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 8/18/23: “Though developed countries have become a bit more dependent on China since 2015, the return of inflation means that the macroeconomic benefits of a Chinese slowdown will mostly or entirely cancel out any financial contagion.”
In Jackson, Mississippi, a water crisis that never ends: “It’s a red war on a blue city, and it’s a white war on a Black city,” Lylla Younes, Grist, 8/17/23: “Last week, two local advocacy organizations filed an emergency petition with the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, requesting interim relief from persistently poor water quality and a greater degree of public involvement in plans to update the infrastructure.”
Hans Breitenmoser: Dairy Farmer for Fair Maps: “Wisconsin is so severely gerrymandered that you can't even hardly think straight,” Joel Bleifuss, Justin Perkins, Barnraiser, 8/16/23: “if you have gerrymandered districts, or if you have districts drawn by political parties and high-priced lawyers and not done transparently, you’re not going to represent the people who actually live there.”
The richest Americans account for 40 percent of U.S. climate emissions, Kasha Patel, Washington Post, 8/17/23: “It just seems morally and politically problematic to have one group of people reaping so much benefit from emissions while the poorer groups in society are asked to disproportionately deal with the harms of those emissions.”
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it
—“We Didn’t Start the Fire,” Billy Joel
Science & Environment
What's the Best Weapon Against Climate Change? Hope, Dan Hurley, Newsweek, 8/14/23: "If there were nothing we could do about climate change, being depressed or giving up would be a logical response," says Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy and one of the most ardent new climate messagers. "But if we realize that the future is in our hands, that means we can make a difference. That is what our hope is based on."
Young environmental activists prevail in first-of-its-kind climate change trial in Montana, Amy Beth Hanson, Matthew Brown, AP News, 8/14/23: “District Court Judge Kathy Seeley found the policy the state uses in evaluating requests for fossil fuel permits — which does not allow agencies to look at greenhouse gas emissions — is unconstitutional.”
Heat Is Not a Metaphor: As the hottest summer on record draws to a close, how do we make sense of the images of a climate in crisis? Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Harper Bazaar, 8/16/23: “I wanted to write a poem about how the extreme heat of the ocean is breaking my heart, but the whales beat me to it.”
Our oceans are the warmest in recorded history. This is why it's so concerning: 'What happens in the oceans doesn't stay in the oceans,' says NASA scientist, Nicole Mortillaro, CBC News, 8/17/23: "2023 might not quite be the warmest year on record, but it will be very close. And 2024 will likely be the warmest on record."
Eels, Cocaine and Climate Change: Forget ‘Cocaine Bear’ and ‘Cocaine Shark.’ To really understand the environmental threat of illicit drugs, look to eels., John R. Platt, Revelator, 8/16/23: “The idea that the behaviors of humans end up in the water and impact our ecosystems and endangered species is an important one to keep in mind.”
A changing climate, growing human populations and widespread fires contributed to the last major extinction event − can we prevent another? Emily Lindsey, The Conversation, 8/17/23: “A similar combination of climate warming, expanding human populations, biodiversity loss and human-ignited fires that characterized the ice age extinction interval in Southern California are playing out again today.”
How Canada's wildfires are warming the stratosphere, India Bourke, BBC, 8/17/23: “One of the most far-reaching ways fires impact the climate is their ability to release vast quantities of carbon stored in trees and soils into the atmosphere. In a vicious feed-back loop, the additional CO2 then contributes to the same long-term warming of the planet that makes the fires themselves more likely.”
Mosquito season has gotten a month longer in some places: More than two-thirds of U.S. locations studied now have longer mosquito seasons, research from Climate Central finds, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 8/14/23
This Network of Regenerative Farmers Is Rethinking Chicken: The team at Tree-Range Farms is pioneering an approach to raising chickens and trees in tandem, storing more carbon and water in the soil while providing an entry point for new and BIPOC farmers often left out of the conventional system, Twilight Greenaway, Civil Eats, 8/16/23
Maine’s salt marshes play key role in fight against climate change, new report says: The state has at least 84 square miles of blue carbon reservoirs, which store at least 1.7 million tons of carbon in the soil and vegetation. That much carbon is equal to the annual emissions of 1.25 million passenger cars, Penelope Overton, Press Herald, 8/14/23
Teachable Moments Require... Teaching: Florida Buries its Head in the Water Instead, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 8/14/23: “… the state’s “education” department has approved a series of right wing videos from Prager U, which draws much of its funding from some of the country’s biggest frackers.”
Boom and Bust, All at Once: The Fraught Modern History of Fish Meal: How the cheap protein fueled the Global North’s agricultural expansion and destabilized the Global South, Ashley Braun, Hakai, 8/16/23: “The public health, ecological, and social impacts of fish meal—which were a consequence of its cheapness as a feed ingredient—were largely invisible on the other side of the world.”
This Bold Plan to Kick the World’s Coal Habit Might Actually Work: Novel climate-financing deals are promising to shut off dirty energy plants in developing countries and retrain their staff to work in the green economy, Bianca Nogrady, Wired, 8/15/23: “It’s a very significant moment for climate finance.”
‘We turn waste into something golden’: the creatives transforming rags to riches: Rich nations’ unwanted clothes often end up in landfills, polluting the global south. But entrepreneurs in Ghana, Pakistan and Chile are turning rubbish into rugs, shoes and toys, Sarah Johnson, The Guardian, 8/16/23
Fresh look at DNA from Oetzi the Iceman traces his roots to present day Turkey, Maddie Burakoff, AP News, 8/16/23: “Oetzi was mostly descended from farmers from present day Turkey, and his head was balder and skin darker than what was initially thought…”
IBM unveils an analog AI chip that works like a human brain: The chip's components work in a way similar to synapses in human brains, Sejal Sharma, Interesting Engineering, 8/14/23: “A global digital processing unit is integrated into the middle of the chip that implements more complex operations that are critical for the execution of certain types of neural networks.”
Complexity Theory’s 50-Year Journey to the Limits of Knowledge: How hard is it to prove that problems are hard to solve? Meta-complexity theorists have been asking questions like this for decades. A string of recent results has started to deliver answers, Ben Brubaker, Quanta, 8/17/23: “At stake is nothing less than the nature of what’s knowable.”
I was born in a welfare state
Ruled by bureaucracy
Controlled by civil servants
And people dressed in grey
Got no privacy, got no liberty
'Cause the twentieth century people
Took it all away from me
—from “20th Century Man,” The Kinks, written by Ray Davies
Health & Wellness
How 10,000 years of plagues left their mark on our DNA, Veronique Greenwood, Washington Post, 8/16/23: “We are the descendants of the survivors, and our genomes show it.”
Scientists Reconstructed a Pink Floyd Song From Brain Activity The research aims to develop technology that lets patients who have lost the ability to speak communicate more naturally, Daniella Hernandez, Wall Street Journal, 8/15/23 (gift article)
Hope for HIV cure as scientists erase its ancestor virus from monkeys: Gene-editing tool that removed mutated areas of DNA in rhesus macaques could be harnessed for use in humans, Sarah Knapton, Daily Telegraph (UK), 8/18/23
Birds
Making Our Yards Safe for Blue Jays: Important warnings about birdbaths, feeders, and especially peanut butter! Laura Erickson, For the Birds, 8/17/23: “National Blue Jay Awareness Month is an excellent time to consider ways to enhance your backyard habitat with native plants providing true natural food and to make sure that your birdbaths are clean and safe and your feeders filled with only genuinely healthy foods.”
Tune into Tullik’s Odyssey, Jeff and Allison Wells, Wiscasset Newspaper, 8/16/23: “Birds of mystery and grace, American Golden-Plovers are also athletes beyond comprehension.”
Your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
—from “The Laughing Heart,” Charles Bukowski
Who could have imagined the growling, hard-hearted Bukowski would write a poem that so inspires me?
Hope and light are what we’ve got. They beat the alternatives every time.
Love to all—wherever you are and whatever you are doing to carry the light.—David