The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 160, June 4, 2023 (V4 #4)
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.—Martin Luther King, Jr.
The historical record shows many of civilizations that have collapsed because of over exploitation of their natural resources, and none that have collapsed because LGBTQ people were treated with equality and respect.—Elie Mystal
Books, Music, and Culture
Getting Sacagawea Right: New evidence suggests that Sacagawea had a longer life than most historians have believed—fifty-seven years longer, Thomas Powers, NY Review of Books, 6/8/23 issue. (DW: This is an important story.) Our Story of Eagle Woman: Sacagawea: They Got It Wrong by the Sacagawea Project Board of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.
A map of 1,001 novels to show us where to find the real America, Susan Straight, LA Times, 5/28/23: “Over the last five years, I’ve read or reread 1,001 books of fiction in my project to create a literary map of this country.”
Jacob Collier, Lewis Saul, Best American Poetry, 5/30/23: “To compare this genius of the 21st century to Bach or Beethoven might seem like a fanboy exaggeration or even blasphemy — but I do so without hesitation.” Tiny Desk Concert
The ‘I’ in BIPOC: Not all Native Americans are leftist political activists, Sherman Alexie, Persuasion, 6/2/23: “It shouldn’t surprise anybody that Indians hold a diverse set of political beliefs. We are, ya know, human.”
Rebecca F Kuang rejects idea authors should not write about other races: US novelist talks of ‘weird kind of identity politics in American publishing,’ Lucy Knight, The Guardian, 5/28/23: “… it is ‘deeply frustrating and pretty illogical’ that novelists should only write about characters of their own race.”
On Learning Life Lessons From Anne of Green Gables: “Anne continues to help me see how much more possibility exists in the world for unbridled expression,” Logan Steiner, LitHub, 6/2/23: “From Anne and Maud together, I have learned to err on the side of filtering less and trusting myself more.” Book: After Anne: A Novel of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Life
Their high school canceled an LGBTQ play. These teens put it on anyway, Hannah Natanson, Washington Post, 5/31/23. (DW: Do read this inspiring, positive story!)
“Smart People Are Falling for Stupid Lies”: How One Florida County Has Become Ground Zero for the Far Right’s Education Blitz: From board battles to book bans to “woke” audits, Republicans in Sarasota are waging a grassroots assault on “everything, everywhere, all at once,” says the county’s former school board chair, Kathryn Joyce, Vanity Fair, 5/31/23
The revolt of the Christian home-schoolers: They were taught that public schools are evil. Then a Virginia couple defied their families and enrolled their kids, Peter Jamison, Washington Post, 5/30/23
Students and Faculty at Ohio State Respond to a Bill That Would Restrict College Discussions of Climate Policies: “You can say gravity isn't true, but if you step off the cliff, you’re going down,” says climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe about restrictions on teaching, Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News, 5/31/23
In a deep red Florida county, a student-teacher revolt shames the right, Greg Sargent, Paul Waldman, Washington Post, 6/1/23: ““No one is teaching your kids to be gay. Sometimes, they just are gay. I have math to teach. I literally don’t have time to teach your kids to be gay.”—Alyssa Marano (resigning teacher in Hernando County, FL)
How to block the book ban bandwagon, Editorial Board, Washington Post, 6/2/23 “[the] best option is to oppose book bans where they begin — at the level of local activists and school boards — by pushing educational officials to respect students’ interest to learn.”
Line for (Picket) Line: How Authors Are Standing With the WGA: on the Power of Writerly Solidarity, Alexis Gunderson, LitHub, 6/1/23: “Writers are workers, whether they’re collaborating on a TV show in a writers room, trucking away at a novel alone in their home office, or hopping on a Google Doc.”
Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
—from “Chanson d’automne,” Paul Verlaine*
Politicks
Amazon and Google fund anti-abortion lawmakers through complex shell game: Blue-chip companies gave to Republican group funneling money to lawmakers who overturned abortion-ban veto in North Carolina, Nick Robins-Early, The Guardian, 6/3/23
Can Little Ukraine Teach Big America How to Deal with Our Oligarch Problem? In 2021 the Zelenskyy declared a campaign to “de-oligarchize” his nation, having diagnosed Ukraine's political & economic crises as tracing back to the corruption by the morbidly rich, Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 5/30/23
Tennessee drag ban is unconstitutional, federal judge rules, Caroline Anders, Washington Post, 6/3/23: “…the law violates First Amendment freedom of speech protections and was “unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad.””
The Unstoppability Of Mass Migration: And the dangers of a reactionary revolt, Andrew Sullivan, Weekly Dish, 6/2/23: “The result is a truly disturbing and metastasizing irrationalism on the right that only seems to get more unbounded over time — an irrationalism that really cannot be represented by anyone but the Great Orange Id of them all. That’s why he’s on the march again. That — and because his strongest issue keeps getting stronger.”
Former Gun Company Executive Explains Roots of America’s Gun Violence Epidemic, Corey G. Johnson, ProPublica, 6/2/23: “Prior to 2007, people in the United States never purchased more than 7 million guns in a single year. By the time Barack Obama left office, the United States was purchasing almost 17 million guns a year. And so I think it’s impossible to discount the degree to which Obama’s presidency lit this whole thing on fire.” (DW: because of right-wing propaganda that white hegemony was about to end.)
False Equivalence: Why does the mainstream media keep depicting lunatic-right Republicans and normal Democrats as equidistant from the center? Robert Kuttner, American Prospect, 6/2/23: “Sometimes, a careless effort to appear balanced can yield coverage that is misleading and just plain wrong.”
Amazon Fires Alabama Union Leader Who 'Lit the Spark of the Current Rise of Labor Activism:’ "Your termination of my employment will not stifle workers' organizing, for when you fire leaders, it only brings more people ignited into the movement," said Jennifer Bates, Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams, 6/2/23
Runaway AI Is an Extinction Risk, Experts Warn: A new statement from industry leaders cautions that artificial intelligence poses a threat to humanity on par with nuclear war or a pandemic, Will Knight, Wired, 5/30/23
Should We, and Can We, Put the Brakes on Artificial Intelligence? Sam Altman, who ushered in ChatGPT, and Yoshua Bengio, an early pioneer of A.I., discuss the growing concerns surrounding unfettered, nonhuman intelligence, David Remnick, New Yorker, 6/2/23
Robot takeover? Not quite. Here’s what AI doomsday would look like: Experts say the fallout from powerful AI will be less a nuclear bomb and more a creeping deterioration of society, Kari Paul, The Guardian, 6/3/23
Speed and Efficiency are not Human Values: The things AI is best at aren't worth all that much to people (as opposed to markets), John Warner, Biblioracle, 6/4/23: “For those of us who are not geniuses, it may be tempting to outsource some portion of our creativity to the AI, so we can get past the fact of our non-geniousness, but those barriers and climbing them is the work of creativity. The goal isn’t to become a genius. It’s to do the work.”
How AI could take over elections – and undermine democracy, Archon Fung, Lawrence Lessig, The Conversation, 6/2/23: “The president will have been elected not because his or her policy proposals or political ideas persuaded more Americans, but because he or she had the more effective AI.”
America's "Greatest Generation" isn't born yet, Steve Schmidt, The Warning, 6/4/23: “The greatest generation though will be the one that finally creates what Winthrop imagined, and that Dr. King saw from the mountaintop. It is a just, harmonious, peaceful, beautiful “city upon a hill.” A place where there is no prejudice and hate. Truly, that accomplishment will suffice to establish for all time the “Greatest Generation.”” (DW: read this, and check out the links to LBJ’s last interview — with Walter Cronkite).
Surrender's just a word
Till you try it out
And see how hard it is to hurt
With someone else around
I'm the worst I've ever been
Afraid of almost everything
The skies are clear
But storms are always coming
—from “Someone Who Loves Me,” Sara Bareilles
Science & Environment
Supreme Court undoing 50 years’ worth of environmental progress: The Supreme Court has taken a brazen anti-regulatory turn. It’s our planet and health that will suffer, Peter Dykstra, Daily Climate, 6/2/23
‘The window is closing’: Cop28 must deliver change of course on climate: With six months until UN summit in Dubai, can its oil executive president bring unwilling countries into line? El Niño may push heating past 1.5C but urgent action could avert catastrophe, Fiona Harvey, The Guardian, 6/2/23
A giant pile of logs is trapping millions of tons of carbon in Canada: But climate change might lead it to break down, Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post, 5/29/23
The One Thing Holding Back Electric Vehicles in America: The biggest hurdle to mass adoption of electric cars is not the cars themselves, Patrick George, Atlantic, 5/31/23: “Americans will need more public chargers if the goal of drastically reducing carbon emissions from cars is to succeed.”
Electric vehicle incentives for ‘gasoline superusers’ would have outsized benefits for the climate: Only about 10% of drivers are responsible for a third of all gasoline consumption in the U.S., YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 5/30/23
What Future Energy Revolutions Do We Need? What Can We Expect About Them? Tomas Pueyo, Uncharted Territories, 5/30/23: “… the only thing that will really make a difference is not public action. It’s the cost of energy that doesn’t emit CO2 dropping below that of fossil fuels.”
3D Content and the Floodgates of Production: A Framework for Tectonic Shifts in Technology, Rex Woodbury, Digital Native, 5/31/23: “The march towards ever-more-immersive content; The gamification of everything; The opening floodgates of production.”
‘Unpredictability is our biggest problem’: Texas farmers experiment with ancient farming styles: A study is under way in the water-scarce region to see if commodity farmers can use the regenerative technique of cover cropping as a way to adapt to rapidly changing weather conditions, Nina Lakhani, The Guardian, 5/29/23
‘Rhythms of the Land’ Preserves the Untold Stories of Black Farmers: Filmmaker and cultural anthropologist Gail Myers discusses the making of her documentary, the oppressive history of sharecropping, and power of seed saving for Black farmers, Dakota Kim, Civil Eats, 6/1/23
Minnesota Emerges as the Midwest’s Leader in the Clean Energy Transition: In its most recent legislative session, the state leapfrogged Illinois to become the regional front-runner in equitable clean energy transition efforts, Aydali Campa, Inside Climate News, 5/31/23
Can humans ever understand how animals think? A flood of new research is overturning old assumptions about what animal minds are and aren’t capable of – and changing how we think about our own species, Adam Kirsch, The Guardian, 5/30/23: “If human minds are incapable of solving the problems they create, then perhaps our salvation lies in encountering very different types of minds.”
How 3D Changes in the Genome Turned Sharks Into Skates: Changes in the 3D structure of their genome gave skates and rays their distinctive winglike fins and pancake flatness, Viviane Callier, Quanta, 5/30/23
New breed of sheep accidentally created at a petting zoo: Dorset attraction welcomes two ‘shalais’ lambs, whose arrival was as unexpected as the story behind their conception, Joe Pinkstone, The Telegraph, 5/31/23
Newly discovered stone tools drag dawn of Greek archaeology back by a quarter-million years, Nicholas Paphitis, APNews, 6/1/23
Across Canada, tens of thousands have evacuated due to wildfires in recent weeks, Emma Jacobs, NPR, 5/31/23: “Some fires have been so huge smoke has drifted as far south as Philadelphia.”
Why Thinking of Cities as Nature Is Key to Fighting Climate Change: Cities should be seen as living, dynamic systems that evolve with people alongside nature if we are to better design solutions to tackle the climate crisis, says one expert, Keira Wright, Bloomberg News, 5/30/23
Artificial intelligence system predicts consequences of disruptions to genetic networks: Computer model helps researchers understand the connections between thousands of genes, and pinpoint how those connections go awry in disease, Sarah C.P. Williams, Broad Institute, 5/30/23
Stay forever more
Take me to the floor
Leave me wanting more
I never felt this way before
You make me feel like I'm new
—from “Feel,” Jacob Collier
Health & Wellness
A catatonic woman awakened after 20 years. Her story may change psychiatry: New research suggests that a subset of patients with psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia may actually have autoimmune disease that attacks the brain, Richard Sima, Washington Post, 6/1/23: “…the impact of the work is already beginning to reshape the practice of psychiatry and the way many cases of mental illness are diagnosed and treated.”
Immunologist Akiko Iwasaki: ‘We are not done with Covid, not even close:’ The Yale professor and long Covid expert on why the virus is causing ongoing illness for so many, and the challenges she faces as a woman of colour in science, David Cox, The Guardian, 5/27/23: “The virus is here to stay with us and that’s why we do need to think about future booster vaccines that match with the circulating variants, as well as the potential of new variants that further evade our existing immunity.”
Microplastics are everywhere. What does that mean for our immune systems? Tiny particles of plastic turn up in our drinking water, blood and even regions of the Earth thought to be pristine—so it’s vital we learn what they’re doing to us, Jessica Hamzelou, MIT Technology Review, 6/2/23
Nanoplastic Ingestion Causes Neurological Deficits: Small plastic particulates can induce inflammatory responses in the gut and brain, but removing them reverses this damage, Shelby Bradford, The Scientist, 5/31/23
Industry knew about risks of PFAS 'forever chemicals' for decades before push to restrict them, study says: Researchers in California examined tactics used by companies to delay restrictions on forever chemicals, Inayat Singh, CBC News, 6/1/23
(Water drip from the kitchen sink,
Tractor roar near the barn,
Dog barking just to bark,
Sunlight hot as an iron on the sill.
She looked at the telephone, looked and looked.)
—from “Telephones from the 50s,” Gary Soto
Birds
Learn the secrets of bird nests: Ducks and songbirds make sure their young all hatch on the same day, Val Cunningham, Star Tribune, 6/1/23: “The advantage of having eggs hatch on the same schedule is that this allows parent songbirds to focus on one thing at a time: first brooding embryos in the shell, then feeding youngsters once they emerge.”
Europe has lost over half a billion birds in 40 years. The single biggest cause? Pesticides and fertilisers, Richard Gregory, The Conversation, 6/1/23
Perry Donham's Robin Story: Robins may be smarter, and more generous, than we think, Laura Erickson, For the Birds, 6/1/23: “I also know from firsthand experience that some birds DO give humans presents, such as the raven in Port Wing, Wisconsin, who inexplicably dropped my wristwatch at my feet the day after I lost it.”
Hummingbirds: The Smallest Birds in the World: Even though they're the smallest bird in the world, hummingbirds have strong hearts and unique wings that can help them turn on a dime and carry them great lengths, Monica Cull, Discover, 6/1/23
Tweet of the week: “Heat-Nuggets NBA Finals? What is this, my damn microwave?!”
New Book: Poets on the Road. Maureen Owen and Barbara Henning traveled across America meeting poets and giving readings in 2019. A travelog in poetry.
Five Things You May Not Know About D-Day, Katie Lange, US Dept of Defense, 6/3/22
The anniversary of D-Day is June 6. Take a moment to give thanks to all who fought and died there.
*“Chanson d’automne” was broadcast across France to signal the coming invasion.
We are seeing the rise of an American version of fascism that must not be neglected or minimized. It’s all connected: climate change denialism, AI, book bannings, anti-LGBTQ legislation and so many other stories you see here.
Be prepared—there’s more to come. Thanks for your support and love to all—David