The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 253, March 16, 2025 (V5 #45)
The true face of power has been revealed.—Sarah Shourd
For as in absolute countries, the king is law, so in free countries, the law ought to be king.— Thomas Paine
This present moment was once the unimaginable future.—Stewart Brand
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.—Anne Frank
Books, Music, Art, Culture
What Western Art Can Learn from Hayao Miyazaki’s Radical Portrayals of Childhood: on Self-Esteem, "My Neighbor Totoro," and Defying Box-Office Tropes, Henry Lien, LitHub, 3/10/25: “What My Neighbor Totoro has that is precious and that many Western stories seem to lack is a deep confidence in childhood and in making stories for children.”
Remembering Athol Fugard, Whose Plays Exposed Apartheid’s Cruelty: The South African writer, who died on March 8 at age 92, brought searing dramatic and moral force to his depictions of people both white and black under his nation’s racist regime, Charles Isherwood, Wall Street Journal, 3/9/25
American Artist’s Love Letter to Octavia E. Butler: What would it mean for the survival of the planet if we were to take seriously Black feminist visions of climate justice in which coexistence with nature is prioritized over environmental plunder? Alexandra M. Thomas, Hyperallergic, 3/11/25: “ Can a creative and futuristic blend of resistance strategies rescue us from the fascist megalomaniacs in power today?”
Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams review – a former disciple unfriends Facebook, Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian, 3/16/25: “This account of working life at Mark Zuckerberg’s tech giant organisation describes a ‘diabolical cult’ able to swing elections and profit at the expense of the world’s vulnerable.”
Inside the Life and Struggle of Victorian-Era Women’s Rights Activist Annie Besant: an Overlooked Early Proponent of Reproductive Freedom in the United Kingdom, Michael Meyer, LitHub, 3/14/25: “Far ahead of her time, Annie Besant foresaw that reproductive rights were worth fighting for, codifying in law, and unceasingly defending.”
Born on a Day When God Was Ill: The Eternal Dice shows César Vallejo breaking with the Latin American modernist tradition in poems that mix satire, socialist ideals, and formal experimentation, Julia Kornberg, Poetry Foundation, 3/10/25: “While Vallejo is working through a new cosmology in a Godless world, he is also attempting to break with the Latin American modernist tradition that he inherited.”
There are blows in life so hard . . . I don’t know!
Blows that feel like God’s loathing; as if, beneath those blows,
the undertow of everything we’ve suffered
formed pools of pain in the soul . . . I don’t know!
—César Vallejo
Art Spiegelman Is “Learning How to Do This Comics Thing Again:” On the occasion of a new documentary, the artist talks with Hyperallergic about the legacy of Maus, comics techniques, Gaza, collaboration, and more, Dan Schindel, HyperAllergic, 3/12/25: “The way I formulated it decades ago was that comics are time turned into space.”
See you in the funny papers: How superhero comics tell the story of Jewish America, Miriam Eve Mora, The Conversation, 3/14/25: “The American comics industry was largely started by the children of Jewish immigrants.”
Cynicism and Authenticity: Some Thoughts about "Culture,” John Ganz, Unpopular Front, 3/14/25: “… I don’t think we are witnessing an exact repeat of 1933. This is not as severe and virulent. It’s more ridiculous…”
Stenographers of Empire: Where is the Moral Courage in the American Media? the Absence of Solidarity Among American Journalists Has Made Donald Trump’s Job That Much Easier, Steven W. Thrasher, LitHub, 3/12/25: “The purpose of journalism is neither anyone’s scoop nor their career; it is getting the public information so that they can create a more informed, better world.”
Stand Up for the First Amendment: Judges must hold the line against Mad King Donald, Judith Rubin, The Contrarian, 3/13/25: “No protection against authoritarian government is more important than the First Amendment.”
'Smokescreen Antisemitism': How the Trump-fueled Arrest of Mahmoud Khalil Endangers Jews: The White House has been abundantly clear: the arrest of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was pursued on behalf of Jews. It's part of a wider strategy to obfuscate MAGA antisemitism and an increasingly fascist regime, Jamie Beran, Ha’aretz, 3/12/25
First They Came for Mahmoud Khalil, Rabbi Brant Rosen, Shalom Rav, 3/12/25: “For the sake of our collective liberation, we must all actively resist and stand down this fascist regime – as well as those who aid and abet it.”
Must-Reads and Thoughts on Fighting for Our Libraries: Everything we cherish must be fought for in these times, Kelly Hayes, Organizing My Thoughts, 3/15/25: “Friday night, Donald Trump signed an executive order that would gut the Institute of Museum and Library Services….Libraries must be fought for.”
the body is beautiful work.
I am never going to be
never.
all I am is happening.
be hold, I said.
be held.—from “Blue Harp,” Temperance Aghamohammadi
Politics, Economics, Technology
Is It Fascism? What the leading book on the subject suggests about Trump and his movement, Dan Gardner, PastPresentFuture, 3/16/25: “Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without legal or ethical restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.” Book: Anatomy of Fascism (2004!)
The Great Shift in the Ethical Base of Society: Denunciations, Sam Kahn, Castalia, 3/11/25: “A certain ethical floor — which was rooted above all else in the market logic of the Industrial Revolution — has disappeared….The new ethic is optimization, and optimization only, and, as the evolutionary biologists themselves would point out, together with Winston Scott, it’s really not so different from the animals.”
Everybody Hates Elon: And other tales of collapsing confidence, Paul Krugman, Newsletter, 3/14/25: “Trump won the election because a number of people believed, wrongly, that he would do great things for the economy. It has taken him less than two months to squander all that undeserved trust.”
"Antisemitism" and Antisemitism: The abuse of the word and the spread of the phenomenon, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 3/14/25: “Fascism places emotion over reason. Words are to become just tools to achieve the vision of the Leader. In our post-truth world, this takes the very special form of the inversion of meaning: fascists call other people "fascists" and antisemites call other people "antisemites." This is taking place right now, in the United States, before our eyes, at the highest levels of our government.”
Urgent warning: Black Mirror has entered the United States, with AI as its handmaiden: AI as a smoke screen to cover for authoritarian actions, Gary Marcus, Marcus on AI, 3/10/25: “[I] fear a world in which the State department can judge anyone, at any time, to be a “threat” to the state, even based on superficial AI analysis, and deport them without due process, using AI as a smoke screen to authoritarian action.”
My Passport Gender Request Was Denied. It Could Have Been Much Worse: After a grueling and expensive bureaucratic process, I became one of the first people to have a passport correction request denied by the new Trump administration, Olive Greenspan, New Republic, 3/11/25
Can the free press be saved? It will take a new movement of responsible readers and benefactors to protect independent media, Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Guardian, 3/13/25: “We are now witnessing mass public capitulation from corporate media owners in a way that feels unprecedented.”
Trump Quietly Made 3 Chilling Moves Against Reproductive Freedom, Susan Rinkunas, Democracy Docket, 3/12/25: “The moves are all steps toward achieving the Project 2025 goals of banning abortion and restricting access to birth control nationwide.”
Michael Lewis and John Lanchester: ‘Trump is a trust-destroying machine,’ Killian Fox, The Guardian, 3/16/25: “Before the 2024 election, the two authors tried to stop Donald Trump’s plan to gut the US federal government with an investigation that transformed the image of civil servants from bureaucrats to superheroes. Now their worst fears have been realized.”
The Return Of The McCarthyite Chill: Trump and Vance say they are for free speech. Yeah, right, Andrew Sullivan, Weekly Dish, 3/14/25: “I’m not defending Khalil’s rights because I hate Israel. I am defending him because I love America.”
Why is Donald Trump crashing the US economy? Because he’s high on his own supply of fake news: Addicted to Fox News and outlets even more extreme, the president finds support and justification for actions disastrous to Americans and the world, Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, 3/15/25
The MAGA plan to cripple DC, Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, Noel Sims, Popular Information, 3/11/25: “Tucked into a budget bill that would fund the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year is a provision that would devastate public schools, decimate police and fire departments, and deteriorate city services.”
'Project 2025 in Action': Trump Administration Fires Half of Education Department Staff: “Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students,” Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, 3/12/25
The Secret Supreme Court Lobbyists Who Want To Stay Hidden: Dark money groups tied to conservative power broker Leonard Leo are trying to kill a rule forcing them to disclose who’s funding their judicial pressure campaigns, Freddy Brewster, The Lever, 3/13/25
Making Sweatshops Great Again: Does Trump want us to manufacture sneakers, not semiconductors? Paul Krugman, Newsletter, 3/13/25: “[Trump’s is] an administration that wants to use tariffs to bring back the low-wage, low-technology industries of the past, while killing policies promoting the industries of the future.”
The Labor Theory of AI: Artificial intelligence may be the first attempt to automate and discipline human labor that even its creators don’t fully comprehend, Ben Tarnoff, NY Review of Books, 3/27/25 issue: “…the management of labor has turned all of society into a ‘digital factory.’”
Can empathy fight fascism? The Vermont senator is trying, Anand Giridharadas, The.Ink, 3/13/25: “While many are banging the drum about fascism and a coup and all the rest, Sanders is reminding us that connecting those issues to the emotional life of voters is vital.”
Here's Why Democrats Can't Meet This Moment, And How We Can Fix It, Rachel Bitcofer, The Cycle, 3/9/25: “…if you want to understand why Democrats seem inept right now its because we have no brain trust.” Recommended book to read: The MAGA Diaries by former conservative journalist Tina Nguyen.
TikTok Door Knock: What Democrats can learn from a surging German left, The Ink, The.Ink, 3/9/25: “We saw we had to put much more effort as well in social media.”
Our Hamiltonian Moment: Progressives need to build, baby, build, Francis Fukuyama, Persuasion, 3/14/25: “…the only way that Trumpism can be displaced is for his opponents to offer something better. The opposition will have to shift from stopping abuses of power, to putting forward a positive program for the future.”
The left needs its own version of techno-optimism: We live in dark, depressing and – frankly – terrifying times. Will technology push us over the edge or help us exit our many crises? Amana Fontanella-Khan, The Guardian, 3/10/25: “Why is it that the only people who offer bold, inspiring visions for the transformative role of technology are the likes of reactionaries like Musk?”
From sleeping in doorways to reporting on homelessness: the journalist chronicling an American crisis: Kevin Fagan, who spent decades at the San Francisco Chronicle, argues in a new book that ‘atrociously unforgivable’ US poverty must be addressed, Dani Anguiano, The Guardian, 3/13/25 Book: The Lost and the Found: A True Story of Homelessness, Found Family, and Second Chances
How Heavy Metal Fuels Indigenous Revival in Patagonia: An anthropologist plunges into the world of Patagonian heavy metal music in Argentina to explore how the genre relates to language and cultural revitalization, Erin Wheeler Streusand, Sapiens, 3/11/25: Members of the Mapuche metal band Awkan write some songs in their native language of Mapudungun.
Standing in the Gaps With Feed Durham: In Durham, North Carolina, a multifaceted mutual aid collective shows us the power of a community caring for its members through food and much more, Katina Parker, Civil Eats, 3/12/25: “Mutual aid is a network of expansive relationships that you nurture and are nurtured by in the direction of your deepest hopes and dreams.”
Hundreds of Thousands Will Die: The writer, surgeon, and former U.S.A.I.D. senior official Atul Gawande on the Trump Administration’s decimation of foreign aid and the consequences around the world, David Remnick, New Yorker, 3/15/25
Putin and Trump Cannot Erase Ukraine, and Joint Efforts to Do So May Backfire, Maria Popova, Oxana Shevel, Just Security, 3/14/25: “…the Trump administration needs to understand that its interest lies not in backing Putin but rather in putting real pressure on the Russian dictator.”
A Found Poem
Many spoke
on condition
of anonymity
for fear of
retaliation
by the federal
government.
E. Ethelbert Miller
Science, Environment, Wilderness
The Felling of the U.S. Forest Service: The Trump Administration has cut two thousand workers, making it harder for the service to fight wildfires and repair storm damage across the country, Peter Slevin, New Yorker, 3/13/25
Saving U.S. Climate and Environmental Data Before It Goes Away: Some 2,000 records went missing from government data sets after the Trump administration took office in January. Canadian geographer Eric Nost talks about the work he and colleagues are doing to archive data related to climate and the environment while it is still accessible, Nicola Jones, Yale Environment 360, 3/11/25
One Photographer’s Quest to Redefine the Shark: With his magnificent underwater images, Gerardo del Villar wants to rehabilitate the reputation of the ocean’s great predators, inspire conservation, and encourage responsible ecotourism, Geraldine Castro, Wired, 3/12/25
Narwhals, ‘unicorns of the sea,’ might use their tusks for play: The whales, which have distinctively long tusks, were filmed in the Arctic chasing a fish in what seemed like a “cat-and-mouse” game, surprising scientists, Frances Vinall, Washington Post, 3/13/25
Microplastics hinder plant photosynthesis, study finds, threatening millions with starvation: Researchers say problem could increase number of people at risk of starvation by 400m in next two decades, Damian Carrington, The Guardian, 3/10/25
Energy-efficient housing doesn’t have to be as expensive as you might think: Boston’s Kenzi project blends cutting-edge energy efficiency with affordability, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 3/10/25
After Cuts, Former NOAA Chief Scientist Says U.S. Science Risks Becoming a “Backwater Enterprise:” With its first wave of firings, the new Trump administration has decimated NOAA, Madeleine Ostrander, BioGraphic, 3/13/25
As Heat Deaths Rise, Planting Trees Is Part of the Solution: But how do we ensure everyone has equal access to shade? Tucson, where heatwave mortality has soared, shows a path forward, Karen Mockler, Revelator, 3/10/25
Evidence of a new phenomenon: Quantum tornadoes in momentum space, Univ of Würzburg, ScienceDaily, 3/10/25: “Electrons form vortices in the momentum space of the quantum semi-metal tantalum arsenide.”
The Road Map to Alien Life Passes Through the ‘Cosmic Shoreline:’Astronomers are ready to search for the fingerprints of life in faraway planetary atmospheres. But first, they need to know where to look — and that means figuring out which planets are likely to have atmospheres in the first place, Elise Cutts, Quanta, 3/12/25
Health, Wellness, Food
Violent experiences alter the genome in ways that persist for generations: A first-of-its-kind study shows that experiencing violence and trauma leaves a heritable imprint on the human genome, Mike Cummings, Yale Today, 3/6/25
As measles cases soar, RFK Jr. declares war on science, Rebecca Crosby, Noel Sims, Popular Information, 3/13/25: “While Kennedy is spreading misinformation and stoking fear about the safety of vaccines, federal health organizations are implementing longer-term policies that will likely undermine vaccination rates even further.”
The growing cancer crisis in young adults and a call to action, Dr. Raphael Cuomo, New Lede, 3/11/25: “…rates of early-onset cancers—those diagnosed in individuals under 50—are rising across multiple cancer types, with colorectal, breast, pancreatic, and esophageal cancers showing some of the most dramatic increases.”
Birds, Birding, Birdlife
The Most Adorable Bird in the Universe: The Cuban Tody!!! Laura Erickson, For the Birds, 3/14/25
US bird populations continue alarming decline: 2025 State of the Birds Report calls for urgent conservation action, Cornell Univ, ScienceDaily, 3/13/25
I walk down to the pond in the morning to watch
and wait for the blue heron who comes at first light
to feed on minnows that swim through her shadow in the water.
She stays until the day grows so bright
that she cannot endure it and leaves with her hunger unsatisfied.
She bows her wings and slowly lifts into flight,
grey and slate blue against a paler sky.
I know she will come back. I see the light create
a russet curve of land on the farther bank,
where the wild rice bends heavy and ripe
under the first blackbirds. I know
she will come back. I see the light curve
in the fall and rise of her wing.
—from “The Sound of One Fork,” Minnie Bruce Pratt
Despite the constant barrage of terrible, earth-threatening, psyche-damaging news and events, we must—we will—resist fear, and the despair that fear creates.
We can resist, oppose, and speak up for what we believe in. And always remember that we are not alone. Do not lose heart! There is so much we can do. I’m sending out 2-3 emails a week with action items to anyone who is interested. Email me if you would like to be on the Tom Paine Lives e-list.
Indivisible is organizing “Hands Off National Day of Action” for April 5. Information here.
Make your voice heard. 5 Calls is the easiest and most effective way for U.S. constituents to make a political impact.
Tesla Takedown Mass Call 3/19/25: Sign up here
Stay strong. Love the ones you’re with.
Love—David
The world is dark but it is not hopeless.—Clarence Darrow
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.— Clarissa Pinkola Estés