The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 192, January 14, 2024 (V4 #36)
Pick an arbitrary, stupid goal, become totally involved in it, and pursue it with vigor, and what happens to you in that pursuit is your life.—Kenny Shopsin
In the blink of an eye, something happens by chance - when you least expect it - sets you on a course that you never planned, into a future you never imagined.—Nicholas Sparks
Books, Art, Music, Culture
He joked that he had 13 readers. He deserves millions: ‘The Geography of the Imagination’ shows off the stylish brilliance of Guy Davenport, a writer who contained multitudes, Becca Rothman, Washington Post, 1/12/24: “The thing about Guy Davenport is that he is a god.” DW: It is remarkable to see this review – a long-overdue recognition of one of the true literary geniuses of our time. I could not recommend a better book. My own copy is well worn now. The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays (no paywall)
Rob Henderson on Foster Care, Social Class and the New American Elite: Yascha Mounk and Rob Henderson discuss his journey from poverty to the Ivy League—and how it has shaped his view of America, Persuasion, 1/13/24: “People don't want to talk about values. They don't want to feel like a schoolmarm wagging their finger at how people live their lives. But if you've benefited from a certain set of cultural practices, think about how they benefited you and how and why you plan to carry them forward for your own children.”
Throwing the Book at Amazon’s Monopoly Hold on Publishing: If a publisher’s titles aren’t available on Amazon, it might as well close shop and find a new line of business. Even the biggest publishers are no match for Amazon’s death grip on the book market, Sandeep Vaheesan, Tara Pincock, The Nation, 1/8/24: “Amazon is the largest bookseller in the world.”
Slow Change Can Be Radical Change: “Describing the slowness of change is often confused with acceptance of the status quo. It’s really the opposite,” Rebecca Solnit, LitHub, 1/11/24: “The expectation that change will be swift and the failure to perceive it when it’s not impacts politics for the worse.”
Field trip: inside America’s first magic mushroom school: At a forest facility in Oregon, the first US state to allow supervised use of the drug, students work toward becoming licensed trip facilitators, Dani Anguiano, The Guardian, 1/13/24
From Iowa to Florida, national lawsuits against local book bans begin to gain traction, Emily St. Martin, LA Times, 1/11/24: “… we must protect the right for all Americans, including students, parents, caregivers, teachers, and librarians, to have equitable access to books and to continue to decide what they read.”
The Flaw That Could Ruin Generative AI: A technical problem known as “memorization” is at the heart of recent lawsuits that pose a significant threat to generative-AI companies, Alex Reisner, The Atlantic, 1/11/24: “The problem is that memorization is part of what makes LLMs useful. An LLM can produce coherent English only because it’s able to memorize English words, phrases, and grammatical patterns.” (no paywall)
Surviving the Israel-Hamas War: A Young Palestinian Rock Musician’s Ordeal: A veteran correspondent reconnects with a friend who has been displaced amid the death and devastation in Gaza, Janine Di Giovanni, Vanity Fair, 1/12/24: ““We’ll come back stronger. We’ll make more songs.”
‘It only takes one to be real and it changes humanity for ever’: what if we’ve been lied to about UFOs? The continuing lack of transparency about UFOs in the US is causing concern not only about the existence of aliens but about the psychological fallout of uncovering a conspiracy, Stuart Clark, The Guardian, 1/14/24
Fred Chappell — North Carolina poet laureate, writer and beloved professor — dies at 87, Josh Shaffer, Charlotte News & Observer, 1/9/24: “There are societies without the concept of money, but there’s never been a society without poetry. We go to it the way moths go to light. There’s songs, there’s advertising jingles, there’s the Bible.”
EPITAPH: THE POET
I never truckled.
I never pandered.
I was born
To be remaindered.—Fred Chappell
Politics, Economics
Living Inside a Psyop: Three months at Harvard, Walter Johnson, N+1, 1/10/24: “How did this proxy battle—the battle for the soul of Harvard—come to stand in for, and finally replace, the war as a topic of conversation and conflict on campus, and, indeed, nationwide?”
First They Came for Harvard: The right’s long and all-too-unanswered war on liberal institutions claims a big one, Rick Perlstein, American Prospect, 1/10/24: “Dig beneath the surface claims and the sophistry of why conservatives attack universities, and it is this, the liberalism, that they cannot abide.”
Claudine Gay Was Not Driven Out Because She Is Black, John McWhorter, NY Times, 1/8/24: “The lessons from what happened to Professor Gay are many. But cops-and-robbers thinking about racial victims and perpetrators will help answer few of them.” (no paywall)
Plagiarism Is the Next ‘Fake News’: Something much simpler than generative AI is driving the new culture war, Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 1/11/24: “Thanks to technology, accusations can be leveled at scale either until they destroy the institutions they were supposed to protect or until the allegations lose their meaning altogether.” (no paywall)
Iowa Whole Lotta Nothing: On what we are owed and what we have lost, Sarah Kendzior, Newsletter, 1/13/24: “The 2024 election is a pale horse race for the American political apocalypse. You cannot run against an existential threat three times. The third time you are just living inside one and not admitting it.”
Courting Ridicule: When constitutionalism becomes comedy, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 1/8/24: “And so actual buffoonery helps no one. If Trump is left on the ballot in defiance of the Constitution by people who claim to be its protectors, he will not respect it or them. But the danger of constitutional comedy is general. It leaves the rule of law more vulnerable, and makes regime change more likely.”
The Economic Cost of Right-Wing Populism: Aspiring autocrats keep ruining their countries' economies. It’s another reason to fear the MAGA movement, Rachel Kleinfeld, Persuasion, 1/12/24
Florida school district removes dictionaries from libraries, citing law championed by DeSantis, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 1/10/24
Did an Abortion Ban Cost a Young Texas Woman Her Life? As many conservatives hail the fall of Roe for saving unborn lives, high-risk pregnancy becomes even more perilous, Stephania Taladrid, New Yorker, 1/8/24: “What conservative lawmakers hailed as the saving of infant lives, medical professionals I interviewed in rural Texas saw as a beleaguering challenge.”
Forget Millionaires. A Few Billionaires Are Now Stealing Our Country, Jim Hightower, Lowdown, 1/9/24: “Now, more than ever, we need to rally grassroots Americans in a high-spirited, openly-rebellious campaign to save our people’s historic democratic values.”
“A Pathetic Surrender”: Why Fox News Just Can’t Quit Donald Trump: Wednesday’s Iowa town hall rankled staffers who see the network—like most of the GOP—falling in line behind the 2024 front-runner. As one correspondent acknowledged afterward, “Trump is the monster we created,” Brian Stelter, Vanity Fair, 1/11/24
The Case for Trump … by Someone Who Wants Him to Lose, Bret Stephens, NY Times, 1/11/24: “You can’t defeat an opponent if you refuse to understand what makes him formidable.”
"Swatting" is a Sign of Declining Democracy and Illuminates Pathologies of US Society: Creating chaos and uncertainty creates a climate propitious for authoritarian governance, but Republicans are also its targets, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, 1/10/23
Republicans make wild claims about the dangers of immigration. Here’s the truth: Trump and his cronies are leaning into five splashy talking points about illegal immigration. But the facts are a bit different, Robert Reich, The Guardian, 1/12/24: “Trump is now moving into full-throttled neofascism, using the actual rhetoric of Hitler to attack immigrants.”
Constitutional Courage: How our fears endanger our future, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 1/10/24: “The Constitution defends itself by guiding us towards our better selves. Yet Americans who should know better are choosing fear over the Constitution, finding excuses to ignore what it says.”
People's Park and the Great American Infill: After the 1970s, we agreed to all let each other have our space. That's over, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 1/8/24: “That People’s Park catered to the lowest of the low was exactly why it represented freedom and equality. There are few spaces left in the developed world that exclude absolutely no one. Now, if Berkeley’s plan goes through, there will be one fewer.”
The AI Octopus: If artificial intelligence lives up to its promise and becomes the lifeblood of every sector of the economy, we can expect a future of economic concentration and corporate political power that dwarfs anything that came before. Collusion and coordination among a handful of players make that outcome all but inevitable, Eric Posner, Project Syndicate, 1/8/24
Data brokers know everything about you – what FTC case against ad tech giant Kochava reveals, Anne Toomey McKenna, The Conversation, 1/12/24: “U.S. law has not kept pace with regulation of commercially available data or governance of AI.”
‘This Has Been Going on for Years.’ Inside Boeing’s Manufacturing Mess: Outsourcing worried engineers and sparked battles over quality before a door plug blew out on an Alaska Airlines plane midflight, Sharon Terlap, Andrew Tangel, Wall Street Journal, 1/13/24 (no paywall)
Sanders warns Biden: address working-class fears or risk losing to demagogue: Warning comes at a critical time as Republicans in Iowa will gather for caucuses that mark official start of 2024 presidential election, Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, 1/13/24
America’s Longtime Sources of Power Have Turned Weak: The US used to be good at persuading allies to pursue its ends and deterring enemies from pursuing theirs. That advantage is being squandered in seven significant ways, Niall Ferguson, Bloomberg, 1/14/24: “the US today is dangerously close to the situation of the interwar British Empire, above all because its electorate and elite are no longer willing to bear the costs of deterrence. This raises the prospect of a confrontation (like those Britain experienced in 1914 and 1939) that will be much costlier than deterrence would have been, in which even a victorious outcome would leave the country greatly weakened.”
The Lost City
Why is the snow tonight so suffocating?
Why does everything taste strange?
Things no longer melt in my mouth.
Afterwards always tastes bittersweet.
There is a city somewhere with no
roads or streets.
There are no clocks, bells or billboards.
The silence is deafening.
Slowly as the morning approaches
we hear a stranger’s song falling with the snow.
—Miho Kinnas & E. Ethelbert Miller
Science, Environment
The Enduring Magic of the Angel Oak: A beloved gathering spot and an emblem of resilience during the civil rights movement, this ancient South Carolina live oak is poised for an exciting future, Lindsey Liles, Garden & Gun, 1/11/24: “…in the process of designing the Angel Oak Preserve, a forty-four-acre park with paths, boardwalks, and a visitor’s center. The renovation…is intended to spread people out on the site, keep the surrounding ecosystem healthy, and educate visitors on the tree’s long history.”
Emissions from Israel’s war in Gaza have ‘immense’ effect on climate catastrophe: First months of conflict produced more planet-warming gases than 20 climate-vulnerable nations do in a year, study shows, Nina Lakhani, The Guardian, 1/9/24
‘We can’t pretend the ecological crisis is separate’: the economist thinking differently about climate breakdown: James Meadway, once a Labour adviser and now a podcast host, says the separation between climate and economy has to end, Maya Goodfellow, The Guardian, 1/10/24
Friction is growing: We're reaching the point where the climate crisis slows the machine, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 1/12/24: “I think even the powers that be are starting to recognize our peril.”
The Threshold at Which Snow Starts Irreversibly Disappearing: If you think it’s bad now, strap in, Zoë Schlanger, Atlantic, 1/10/24: “Nonlinear relationships indicate accelerated change; shifts are small for a while but then, past a certain threshold, escalate quickly.” (no paywall)
To get people to reduce their carbon footprint, we need to address inequality: In a new paper, researchers argue that campaigns to encourage behavior change should focus on helping people overcome barriers to action—not just providing information, Sarah DeWeerdt, Anthropocene, 1/8/24
‘The wildlife that has come is phenomenal’: the UK farmers holding off floods the natural way: Planting trees, creating floodplains and rewilding rivers are among the new techniques being used to adapt to a heating climate, Helena Horton, The Guardian, 1/11/24
Once Known for Its Pollution, Pittsburgh Becomes a Poster Child for Climate Consciousness: The National Climate Assessment shines a light on the city’s “innovative” plans to curb flooding based on projections for heavier, climate-amplified precipitation, Jon Hurdle, Inside Climate News, 1/8/24
New material found by AI could reduce lithium use in batteries, Shiona McCallum, BBC, 1/9/24: “Microsoft researchers used AI and supercomputers to narrow down 32 million potential inorganic materials to 18 promising candidates in less than a week - a screening process that could have taken more than two decades to carry out using traditional lab research methods.”
How CRISPR could yield the next blockbuster crop: Scientists are attempting to rapidly domesticate wild plant species by editing specific genes, but they face major technical challenges — and concerns about exploitation of Indigenous knowledge, Michael Marshall, Nature, 1/9/24
In Florida Everglades, our tribal conservation plan will end drilling in Big Cypress for good": The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida has a plan to stop the drilling and protect the aquifer, Talbert Cypress, Tampa Bay Times, 1/9/24
Humpbacks Rebound in 20th-Century Whaling Hotspot: In summer, South Georgia island’s Cumberland Bay now sees whale numbers that rival the early days of whaling, Douglas Main, Hakai, 1/8/24
How climate change is affecting air travel: One form of severe turbulence has increased by more than 50% over the north Atlantic during the past 40 years, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 1/9/24
Uncertainty Abounds in Seeding the Sky to Fight Climate Change: Some scientists have suggested injecting solid particles such as alumina, calcite, or even diamonds into the atmosphere to temporarily limit climate warming. But new research shows there are still big unknowns, Sarah Derouin, Eos, 1/9/24
Neuroscience is pre-paradigmatic. Consciousness is why: Nothing in the brain makes sense except in the light of consciousness, Erik Hoel, Intrinsic Perspective, 1/9/24: “For to this day, neuroscience has no well-accepted theory of consciousness—what it is, how it works.”
Cells Across the Body Talk to Each Other About Aging: Biologists discovered that mitochondria in different tissues talk to each other to repair injured cells. When their signal fails, the biological clock starts winding down, Viviane Callier, Quanta, 1/8/24: “…mitochondria in cells across the body communicate about cellular health.”
In a rare discovery, scientists reveal the oldest piece of fossilized skin, Sabrina Malhi, Washington Post, 1/11/24: “A tiny fragment of bumpy fossil found in a cave in Oklahoma is now the oldest known piece of preserved skin.”
Newly discovered cosmic megastructure challenges theories of the universe: A 1.3bn light year-sized ring discovered by PhD student in Lancashire appears to defy the cosmological principle assumption, Hannah Devlin, The Guardian, 1/11/24: “Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have to abandon the cosmological principle after future discoveries.”
Your eyes are just
like bees, and I
feel like a flower.—from “Four-word lines,” May Swenson
Health, Wellness
There’s a Huge Covid Surge Right Now and Nobody Is Talking About It: The US is in the midst of the largest Covid surge since Omicron, but with minimal testing and good population immunity, the wave is largely being ignored, Celia Ford, Wired, 1/10/24
Scientists find about a quarter million invisible nanoplastic particles in a liter of bottled water, Seth Borenstein, AP News, 1/8/24: “About 10 to 100 times more nanoplastics than microplastics were discovered in bottled water, the study found.”
NICU medical devices may increase babies’ chemical exposure, EHN Staff, Environmental Health News, 1/12/24
Birds, Birds, Birds
Ancient Murrelets! Why do birds of the Northern Pacific wander inland? Your guess is as good as mine, Laura Erickson, For the Birds, 1/11/24: “Ancient Murrelets are true oceanic birds who feed on small fishes and large zooplankton, especially crustaceans called ‘krill.’“
Bird Lifespan: How Long Do Wild Birds Live? From those in captivity to the feathered friends at your feeders, learn how long birds live, and what factors affect their survival, Kenn and Kimberly Kaufman, Birds & Blooms, 1/11/24: “For most small songbirds, the maximum known life spans are between eight and 15 years.”
And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total? I will start and there will be an interruption and I will have to gather it all together again. Or I will become engulfed with all I did or did not do, with what should have been and what cannot be helped.—from “I Stand Here Ironing,” Tillie Olsen (Happy Birthday!)
It helps me to know we are in this together and by sharing to create and sustain our community. I hope you feel that way too.
Wherever you are, whoever you are with, whatever you are doing — I send regards and 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. Take care all. We need each other, now more than ever.—David