The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 183, November 12, 2023 (V4 #27)
Women don’t want to die for Mike Johnson’s religious beliefs.—Molly Jong-Fast
I cannot live without books.—Thomas Jefferson
Books, Music, and Culture
At last, literary pioneer Willa Cather is having a moment: Benjamin Taylor’s incisive and accessible biography pays tribute to Cather, whose many books, including ‘My Ántonia’ and ‘A Lost Lady,’ are finally getting their due, Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post, 11/10/23 “The certainty of countless miles of empty country and open sky and wind and night on every side of me. It’s the happiest feeling I ever have. And when I am most enjoying the lovely things the world is full of, it’s then I am most homesick for just that emptiness and that untainted air.” Buy the book: Chasing Bright Medusas: A Life of Willa Cather
Drip Painting Was Actually Invented by a Ukrainian Grandmother… Not Jackson Pollock: on the Erasure of Women's Revolutionary Contributions to Art History, Noah Charney, LitHub, 11/9/23: “What Janet Sobel sparked, Jackson Pollock made famous.” Book: Brushed Aside: The Untold Story of Women in Art
Jezebel, the pioneering women’s site, is “suspended” by G/O Media: The site’s seven editorial staffers have been laid off, along with 16 other staffers across G/O, Laura Hazard Owen, Nieman Lab, 11/9/23
There was never a band like Rush. Geddy Lee doesn’t want to forget it: It took a series of losses for the high-voiced rock star to confront his personal history. It all came out in his new memoir, Geoff Edgers, Washington Post, 11/10/23: “… in the era of headbanging and “Cat Scratch Fever,” they were singing 11-minute songs inspired by the epic poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.”
‘Best of both sides’: Berlin’s Israeli-Palestinian restaurant that won’t give in to fear: When Israel-Hamas war broke out, Kanaan shut amid a rise in antisemitism in Germany. But it has reopened as ‘an island of peace’, Ashifa Kadam, The Guardian, 11/8/23: ‘We’re not fighting any narrative. We put the Palestinian narrative equally next to the Israeli narrative. And then we try to find the bridges between them.”
Native American Novels Recommended by Indigenous Booksellers: Native booksellers about their picks for Native American Heritage Month, Vanessa Lillie, CrimeReads, 11/6/23
The Grim Truth Behind Our Beloved Children’s Books: My toddler loves books like “But Not the Hippopotamus,” “Babar the Elephant,” and “Yertle the Turtle.” But the world he’s inheriting is losing these animals at an astonishing rate, Aaron Regunberg, New Republic, 11/9/23
The History of Writing is the History of Humanity: on Lost Books, Rediscovery, and Ancient Wisdom, Walter Stephens, LitHub, 11/10/23: “The history of writing is ready for its emotional close-up: what people have done with writing is now well known, but how they felt about it over time remains uncharted.” Buy the book: How Writing Made Us Human, 3000 BCE to Now
‘The good guys don’t always win’: on peace, Barbie and what freedom cost him: What can the great myths (and the summer blockbusters) tell us about peace? The writer, who has turned to fables all his life, weighs their wisdom – and considers the price he himself has paid for liberty, Salman Rushdie, The Guardian, 11/8/23: “Peace is a hard thing to make, and a hard thing to find. And yet we yearn for it, not only the great peace that comes at the end of war, but also the little peace of our private lives, to feel ourselves at peace with ourselves, and the little world around us. It is one of our great values, a thing ardently to pursue. There is also something decidedly fabulist about the notion of peace prizes. But I like the idea that peace itself might be the prize, a whole year’s supply of it, delivered to your door, elegantly bottled. That’s an award I’d be very happy to receive. I am even thinking of writing a story about it, The Man Who Received Peace as a Prize.”
Of earth and sky, Homo sapiens creating themselves,
following the mode and model of the creator’s creation,
particle by particle, quest by quest, witness by witness,
even though the unknown far away and the unknown
nearby be seen and not seen… let there be goodwill
and accounting, let there be praise resounding.
—from “Homo Sapiens: Creating Themselves,” Pattiann Rogers
Politics and Economics
An Open Letter to the Left: Joe Biden Must Be Re-Elected: What's Happening in Gaza is Illegal. Punishing Biden For It Will Bring Fascism Home, Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, Newsletter with ECM, 11/11/23: “Refusing to vote for Biden in 2024 because he can't control Netanyahu/the IDF (but is engaging in diplomacy toward a ceasefire while not saying so publicly), and/or because US funding always goes for war, is a recipe for horrors HERE AT HOME that are unimaginable.”
How Russian falsehoods spread to U.S. through faux local news, Loreben Tuquero, Austin Statesman, 11/11/23: "You have this integration into the information ecosystem wherein enough traction is created and has gone through enough laundering that the information is successfully given legitimacy and treated as though it came from a legitimate source."
Trump Plots Against His Enemies: Inauguration Day could be a national disaster, Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 11/6/23: “If you’re wondering how Trump plans to accomplish all of this, he likely has no idea. But his cronies at the Heritage Foundation (including former administration officials) do, and they are busily making plans.”
Hypermasculinity, Misogyny, Homophobia: The Toxic Triad of Authoritarian Gender Politics, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, 11/9/23: “Hypermasculinity might be seen as the connective tissue of the authoritarian playbook. In strongman states, the idealization of the man who takes what he wants and gets away with everything is central to personality cults and and also justifies the use of violence, corruption and other tools of illiberal rule.” (Long piece, worth the time to read!)
Liberalism is losing the information war: Because it's refusing to fight, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 11/8/23: “Totalitarian powers are on the march, and social media gives them the opportunity to reach American hearts and minds more directly than ever before. One of our government’s essential functions is to guard us against such powers. If we force it to abnegate that function, mainlining totalitarian propaganda out of fear of creating our own, we’re all a bunch of suckers.”
Top takeaways from 2023 election results — and what they mean for 2024, Aaron Blake, Washington Post, 11/8/23: “It’s the latest of many post-2016 elections in which Democrats can come away feeling good.”
UPDATE: School board voters fight back, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 11/9/23: “Voters reject right-wing school board candidates.”
Abortion rights victories show this issue is unlikely to fade in 2024 elections − 3 things to know, Nicole Huberfeld, Linda C. McClain, The Conversation, 11/10/23: “Reframing abortion restrictions does not fool voters.”
Where Have All The Democrats Gone? To win back the allegiance of working-class Americans, Democrats should stake out a middle ground in the culture war and prioritize a New Deal-style economic agenda, John B. Judis, Ruy Teixeira, Persuasion,11/6/23: “There is a danger to democracy lurking in this transformation of the parties into cultural warriors.”
Why Is America So Vulnerable to Charlatans Like Trump? Donald Trump is a confidence man, a charlatan, an unrepentant liar whose deceits have cost at least a half-million Americans their lives. Why do so many American support him? Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 11/8/23: “Trump has three television networks, hundreds of websites, and fifteen hundred radio stations all echoing his lies to keep his cult intact.”
Frogs Boiled: What Trump is Planning for a Second Term, Joyce Vance, Civil Discourse, 11/9/23: “The singular challenge of the next election will be keeping the Republic in the face of Trump’s plans to take hold of power in a way that suggests he will never relinquish it.”
Criminalizing Dissent, Judd Legum, Tesnim Zekeria, Popular Information, 11/8/23: ““We are extremely concerned by this breathtakingly broad and unprecedented use of state terrorism, anti-racketeering, and money laundering laws against protesters.” (This is about the Atlanta Cop City protests in Atlanta that got protestors indicted under RICO statutes.)
The Billionaires Behind School Privatization, Jim Hightower, Lowdown, 11/7/23: “National billionaires like the Koch brothers – and in Texas, we have Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, two messianic oil billionaires from West Texas who double as proselytizers of a toxic theology of Christian nationalism.”
The Inflation Reduction Act has created nearly 75,000 jobs. Plus it’s spurred more than $86 billion in private investments, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 11/6/23
Why America Needs a Rural New Deal: Two political strategists make the case for a political revival, Anthony Flaccavento, Alan Minsky, Barn Raiser, 11/9/23: “The Rural New Deal begins with the recognition that the health of rural economies, places and people is essential for the health and well-being of our nation, as most urban and suburban residents are almost entirely dependent upon rural farmers and workers for their food, fiber, building materials, energy and clean water.
A win win opening for a president who badly needs one? One route to reelection runs through the Gulf of Mexico, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 11/7/23: “…a Biden decision to restrict new approvals for natural gas exports would cut prices for Americans.”
Ukraine Is Not A “Frozen” War: Increasingly ignored by the international community, fighting in Ukraine has far from abated, Michal Kranz, Persuasion, 11/8/23: “The idea that things have fallen quiet is an illusion—one that serves to diminish outside interest in and support for Ukraine.”
Would you sell them out? A question for American lawmakers about Ukraine, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 11/8/23: “If we stop supporting Ukraine, then everything gets worse, all of a sudden, and no one will be talking about “fatigue” because we will all be talking about disaster: across all of these dimensions: food supply, war crimes, international instability, expanding war, collapsing democracies. Everything that the Ukrainians are doing for us can be reversed if we give up. Why would lawmakers even contemplate doing so?”
Pentagon Is Throttling Ukraine Aid as Funding Push Stalls: Spokeswoman says $1 billion left to replenish weapons stocks; Congress implored to approve administration’s latest request, Anthony Capaccio, Bloomberg, 11/9/23
The Agony of Waiting for a Ceasefire That Never Comes: When the war in Gaza started, my family fled to the Jabalia refugee camp. Then Israel started bombing the camp, Mosab Abu Toha, New Yorker, 11/6/23
Further Observations on the Israel-Hamas War, Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, 11/7/23: “…what amazes me is how little we know about what is happening on the ground in the battle between Israel and Hamas.”
The "Genocide" Canard Against Israel: It's actually the opposite of the truth. And that matters, Andrew Sullivan, Weekly Dish, 11/10/23: “The devastation in Gaza is horrifying to watch, worse than horrifying. Anyone who isn’t deeply troubled by the mass death has lost humanity….The only people actively and proudly engaged in genocide are Hamas.”
The Long Wait of the Hostages’ Families: The relatives of those held by Hamas “live with a timer now that’s always on,” Ruth Margalit, New Yorker, 11/11/23: “As Israel marks a month since it was invaded by a Hamas-led force that committed massacres along Israel’s southern communities—and retaliated with air strikes, cutting off Gaza City from the rest of the coastal enclave—the families of more than two hundred hostages held by Hamas and by other Palestinian armed groups are living in a nightmarish state of limbo: not knowing the fates of their loved ones, or whether they will see them again. “They just vanished.”
How to Solve the Israel/Palestine Problem, Tomas Pueyo, Uncharted Territories, 11/8/23: “No side can negotiate a peace agreement because what they want is mutually exclusive. They both want the same land, they both hate each other, and they would both “get rid of the problem” if they could. There is no amount of negotiation and creative redrawing of maps that will outweigh this reality. One requirement must be met before peace is signed: We need to change people’s minds. You might think this is impossible. Luckily, it’s not. We’ve done it before.”
My life has been defined by genocide of Jewish people. I look on Gaza with concern: The history of mass killings, for me, is never ending. And so are the lessons for today, Jason Stanley, The Guardian, 11/11/23: “Israel suffered an unspeakably horrifying terrorist attack, by a criminal group dedicated to its destruction. But in its desire for revenge, Israel is engaging in the mass killing of innocent civilians, largely children, which may spiral even further out of control.”
Again On the Slaughter: A response to the Israel-Hamas war, Peter Cole, Yale Review, 11/2/23: “Being humane is hard work. Remaining humane in the face of inhumane cruelty is far more difficult.”
And cursed be he who cries: Revenge!
Vengeance like this, for the blood of a child,
Satan has yet to devise.
Let the blood fill the abyss!
Let it pierce the blackest depths
and devour the darkness
and eat away and reach
the rotting foundations of the earth.
—from “On the Slaughter,” Haim Nahman Bialik (translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole).
Science and Environment
The Man Who Invented Fifteen Hundred Necktie Knots: For tie aficionados, knots are an art form—and a surprisingly difficult math problem, Matthew Hutson, New Yorker, 11/10/23: “…there is an infinite number of things you can do with a tie.”
Silicon Valley’s Big, Bold Sci-Fi Bet on the Device That Comes After the Smartphone: Humane, a company started by two former Apple employees, says its new artificial intelligence pin can stop all the scrolling. Can it live up to the hype? Erin Griffith, Tripp Mickle, NY Times, 11/9/23: “Humane’s ambition to disrupt the smartphone is audacious, creative and even irrational.”
Fei-Fei Li Started an AI Revolution by Seeing Like an Algorithm: Researcher Fei-Fei Li’s ImageNet project provided the feedstock for the deep learning boom that brought the world ChatGPT and other world-changing AI systems, Steven Levy, Wired, 11/10/23
Out of control herbivores are derailing restoration projects around the globe: Left untamed by predators, hungry plant-eaters can wreak havoc on already damaged ecosystems, a new wide-ranging survey finds, Warren Cornwall, Anthropocene, 11/8/23
Can goats and sheep stop wildfires? This shepherdess is rallying the flock: A rancher in California is training a new generation to fight fires – and foster deeper connections to the land – with farm animals, Gabrielle Canon, The Guardian, 11/11/23
Forever chemicals: New report claims PFAS are sprayed onto fields and food in pesticides, Euronews Green, Euronews, 11/9/23
A Major Alarm Is Flashing Under Greenland’s Ice: Greenland’s northern ice shelves have lost more than a third of their volume since 1978, new research finds, Matt Simon, Wired, 11/7/23
Food, soil, water: how the extinction of insects would transform our planet: A new study doubles the number of species at risk of extinction to 2m, driven by the latest data on insects. Losing these tiny creatures would have huge implications for life on Earth, Phoebe Weston, The Guardian, 11/10/23
The 20 Farming Families Who Use More Water From the Colorado River Than Some Western States: Tens of millions of people — and millions of acres of farmland — rely on the Colorado River’s water. But as its supply shrinks, these farmers get more water from the river than entire states, Nat Lash, Janet Wilson, ProPublica, 11/9/23
Should we clean up the trash in our oceans? New study has a controversial answer, Doyle Rice, USA TODAY, 11/9/23: “we should focus 95% of our attention and energy on reducing the flow of plastic trash into the ocean and only 5% on cleanup.”
Weaving the Harbor Back to Life: How Māori knowledge is helping to revive the mussel population in New Zealand’s Ōhiwa Harbour, Monica Evans, Hakai, 11/9/23: “Four years on, the restoration stations seem to be working.”
Why Michigan’s Clean Energy Bill Is a Really Big Deal: A comparison with laws in Illinois and Minnesota shows the scope of the state’s ambition, Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News, 11/9/23: “Michigan is set to become the third state in the Midwest and twelfth in the country to require a shift to clean electricity.”
The Scientist Who Decodes the Songs of Undersea Volcanoes: In the rumbles and groans of underwater volcanoes, Jackie Caplan-Auerbach finds her favorite harmonies — and clues to the Earth’s interior, Robin George Andrews, Quanta, 11/8/23
Oh, can you hear that sweet sweet sound
Yeah, I was lost but now I'm found
Sometimes there's nothing left to save
That's how you sing amazing grace
—from “That’s How You Sing Amazing Grace,” Low
Health and Wellness
Gas cookers pump out toxic particles linked to childhood asthma, report finds: Scientists find average levels of nitrogen dioxide almost twice as high in homes cooking with gas as in those cooking without, Ajit Naranjan, The Guardian, 11/8/23
COVID Map Shows Where Hospitalizations Are Increasing in the US, Jess Thomson, Newsweek, 11/9/23: “…hospitalization rates jumped significantly in several states, including Texas, New Mexico, Kansas and Nebraska.”
Birds
What the Marabou Stork Taught Me About Writing in an Era of Mass Extinction and Waste: on Figuring Out How to Thrive During an Apocalypse, Ashia Ajani, LitHub, 11/6/23: “The way Marabou storks chase after reminds me of how this work can be buttressed by both hope and pragmatism, and of course, a voracious appetite.”
The Healing Grace of Birds: We have no clue how much birds deal with anxiety and worry, but they sure have the capacity to relieve ours, Laura Erickson, For the Birds, 11/11/23: “I really am an introvert who deals much better with birds than with people outside my family.”
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love—William Blake
The weird and awful is all around us. In such times, we must fight for peace and beauty, and for love, above all. Please do keep in touch. Thanks to each of you who sends messages, news, encouragement. It is wonderful to hear from so many of you.
Stay well. Share love. We need each other, now more than ever. Love to all—David
Poetry, an antidote to despair, even when the poem is about despair.