The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 147, March 5, 2023 (V3 #42)
Having a machine write your first draft is not a shortcut, it’s a short circuit.—David Murray
There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes.—R. Buckminster Fuller
But the only possible guarantee of the future is responsible behavior in the present.—Wendell Berry
& the turtle who holds up the world holds up
the world
—from “A group of girls from Minnesota or black mascara,” Maureen Owen
Books and Culture
Trust the Plan review: How QAnon – and Trump – unhinged America: Will Sommer of the Daily Beast paints a troubling picture of a conspiracy theory showing few signs of decline, Lloyd Green, The Guardian, 3/5/23: “It can muster the devotion and fanaticism of a religious group. The dream never dies.” Book: Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy that Unhinged America
What Is This Healthcare, Earthlings? #1: THE NURSE ANTIGONE: In which I played a crabby old prophet who is always right.Typecasting: such a burden! Margaret Atwood, In the Writing Burrow, 3/1/23: “Time to pay attention, administrators and politicians! Less pot-banging. More listening. That’s just my suggestion, as a crabby old prophet who is always right.”
Wayne Shorter, jazz musician of innovation and introspection, dies at 89: His complex harmonies and lyrical melodies made him one of the most influential jazz musicians of the past half-century, Gene Seymour, Washington Post, 3/2/23: Listen to this—one of the most beautiful jazz pieces ever. “Infant Eyes” (1966) An incredible band: Wayne Shorter—tenor saxophone/Freddie Hubbard—trumpet/Herbie Hancock—piano/Ron Carter—bass/Elvin Jones—drums.
Arlington Road, the Conspiracy Thriller that Foresaw the Spread of Far-Right Extremism in America: The 1999 film was a darkly prophetic tale about suburban neighbors, David Masciotra, CrimeReads, 3/3/23. Ed. note - this film is worth watching. Spooky and riveting.
Judy Blume Goes All the Way: A new generation discovers the poet laureate of puberty, Amy Weiss-Meyer, The Atlantic, 2/27/23: “For more than 50 years, Blume has been a beloved and trusted guide to children who are baffled or terrified or elated by what is happening to them, and are trying to make sense of it, whether it has to do with friendship, love, sex, envy, sibling rivalry, breast size (too small, too large), religion, race, class, death, or dermatology.”
In Memory of a Poet: Carolyn Forché Remembers Charles Simic - “We are both peasants!” Carolyn Forché, LitHub, 3/2/23: “In Charlie’s poetry, I saw Central European darkness and humor of the sort I grew up with in my extended family’s immigrant community in Detroit. While it had seemed strange to my American peers to write about “the old country,” it did not seem strange to Charlie, and so as a very young poet in America, I no longer felt alone.”
Book bans and restrictions are a losing issue for Republicans, Madison Hall, Business Insider, 2/27/23. Independents don't like book bans. Democrats despise them.
Booksellers Respond to Book Challenges and Bans: In ABA sessions on book bans and strategies to combat them, keynoters and attendees say, "This is our turf,” Ed Nawotka, Nathalie op de Beeck, Publishers Weekly, 2/27/23
Culture war in the stacks: Librarians marshal against rising book bans: Facing smear campaigns and death threats, librarians are on the front lines of what they call an urgent battle for intellectual freedom, Hannah Allam, Washington Post, 3/2/23
The Reaction Economy, William Davies, London Review of Books, 3/2/23: “Our public sphere is frequently dominated by events you could call ‘reaction chains’, whereby reactions provoke reactions, which provoke further reactions, and so on.”
How to navigate the AI apocalypse as a sane person: A compendium of AI-safety talking points, Erik Hoel, The Intrinsic Perspective, 2/28/23. This is a really really smart article that makes me really really nervous about AI: “A cognitive system with sufficiently high cognitive powers, given any medium-bandwidth channel of causal influence, will not find it difficult to bootstrap to overpowering capabilities independent of human infrastructure.”
Welcome to the Museum of the Future AI Apocalypse: The new Misalignment Museum in San Francisco is a memorial to an imagined future in which artificial general intelligence kills most of humanity, Khari Johnson, Wired, 3/3/23
The “Dazed and Confused” Generation: People my age are described as baby boomers, but our experiences call for a different label altogether, Bruce Handy, New Yorker, 3/2/23: “I have a proposal: let’s split the baby boom in half and dub those of us born between 1956 and 1964 the “Dazed and Confused” generation, after Richard Linklater’s quasi-autobiographical teen movie, which is coming up on its thirtieth anniversary.”
Here come my night thoughts
On crutches,
Returning from studying the heavens.
What they thought about
Stayed the same,
Stayed immense and incomprehensible.
—from “The Something,” Charles Simic
Politics
Dear President Carter, Michael Moore, Michael Moore Newsletter, 2/27/23: “ Please take all this gratitude with you. Please know that you mattered to all of us, you made a huge difference, you fought for those who had the least, and for those deemed to be the last you did your best to make them first. Jimmy, we love you.”
UN urged to intervene over destruction of US abortion rights: letter from human rights groups says overturning of the constitutional right violates US’s obligations as a UN member state, Poppy Noor, The Guardian, 3/2/23
America's Infrastructure Scores a C-, 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Infrastructurereportcard.org. “Growing wear and tear on our nation's roads have left 43% of our public roadways in poor or mediocre condition, a number that has remained stagnant over the past several years.”
The Build-Nothing Country: Stasis has become America's spoils system, and it can't go on, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 2/27/23: “Even as developers plan an unprecedented number of grid-scale wind and solar installations, project construction is plummeting across the U.S.”
It’s O.K. to Be Confused About This Economy: Even the experts don’t really know where inflation and jobs are headed, John Cassidy, New Yorker, 2/28/23: “…beware anyone who claims to know exactly where the economy is heading.”
The House was supposed to grow with population. It didn’t. Let’s fix that, Danielle Allen, Washington Post, 2/28/23: “As originally conceived, the House was supposed to grow with every decennial census.”
What Will Happen To Everyone Who is Not White, Straight, & Male If We Don't Speak Out? Fascists always start by declaring themselves the victims of others. Victimhood is essential to the fascist worldview; it’s at its core, Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 3/3/12
The Useful Idiots Fueling the Right-Wing Transphobia Panic: Prominent center-left journalists were swindled by obvious nonsense about a St. Louis gender clinic, Ryan Cooper, American Prospect, 3/2/23
Murdoch Exposed, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 3/1/23: “In addition to being unethical, Murdoch's alleged conduct was also potentially illegal.”
Rupert Murdoch's Post-Truth Nihilism: The only thing that will get you fired at Fox is telling the truth, Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish, 3/3/23: “The great and obvious flaw in the political right’s legitimate criticism of mainstream media bias is that the most dishonest, cynical, postmodern, post-truth, “everything-is-power” media enterprise is Fox News.”
Unresolved Questions: The FBI and January 6, Joyce Vance, Civil Discourse, 3/3/23: “It’s past time for that course correction to happen, even if it requires changes at the top.”
Is it folklore, the assumption
that a man will choose a lover
over his children
and that a mother her children
over her lover?
—from “Equivalents,” Mónica de la Torre
Science and Environment
‘Everyone should be concerned’: Antarctic sea ice reaches lowest levels ever recorded: With the continent holding enough ice to raise sea levels by many metres if it was to melt, polar scientists are scrambling for answers, Graham Readfearn, The Guardian, 3/4/23
Why It’s Time to Officially Get Over Your EV Range Anxiety: New research looks at driving patterns, EV range and charging times, and comes to some surprising conclusions that should put consumers’ minds at ease, Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News, 3/2/23
Why S.U.V.s Are Still a Huge Environmental Problem: The world is moving toward heavier cars at a time when it should be doing precisely the reverse, Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker, 3/3/23: “Last year, the world’s S.U.V.s collectively released almost a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.”
Is it best to protect whale habitat where it once was, or where it is now? Scientists discover that today’s sperm whale habitat is shaped by the ghost of human hunting, hinting at the peril of ignoring the past when working to change the planet’s future, Warren Cornwall, Anthropocene, 3/1/23: “In the case of the sperm whale, understanding not only where the species is found today, but also where it once thrived, is key for effective, science-driven conservation planning and action.”
To Reduce Mortality From High Heat in Cities, a New Study Recommends Trees: The paper’s senior author says it stands at the “nexus of the climate crisis, urban forestry, health and urban planning,” Danish Bajwa, Inside Climate News, 3/1/23
A greener Marx? Kohei Saito on connecting communism with the climate crisis: Author of surprise hit Marx in the Anthropocene has developed his arguments in a new study of Karl Marx’s ecological thinking, Maya Goodfellow, The Guardian, 2/28/23. Book: Marx in the Anthropocene
A vanishing world. Winter sea ice is melting away from Labrador, threatening to take the traditional Inuit way of life there with it, Malone Mullin, CBC, 2/28/23: “The land and sea is who I am. It’s what keeps me alive.”
Climate change threatens Pueblo people’s traditional practices: Local conifer forests are endangered by drought stress and extreme heat, which may make plants used in traditional ceremonies scarce, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 3/1/23
Worried about Sea Level Rise? Look for the Lichens: One of the great infrastructure challenges of the next few decades is to figure out which coastal sites should be abandoned and which can be saved. Lichens can help, Ian Rose, Hakai, 2/28/23
What’s the carbon fallout of Russia’s war on Ukraine? While death, destruction and war crimes dominate the headlines, some striking climate implications are now also coming into focus, Mark Harris, Anthropocene, 3/2/23
These companies want to tackle food waste with microbes: There’s always money in the grocery store dumpster, Casey Crownhart, MIT Technology Review, 3/1/23
60 Scientists Call for Accelerated Research Into ‘Solar Radiation Management’ That Could Temporarily Mask Global Warming: Their public letter comes after an even larger group of scientists and academics called for a strict ban on such “geoengineering,” saying it could divert attention and resources from needed greenhouse gas, Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News, 2/28/23
We Have a Real UFO Problem. And It’s Not Balloons: America’s fixation on the recent objects floating over the country overlooks a much more serious problem with advanced technology aircraft that we can’t explain, Ryan Graves, Politico, 2/28/23
Back to the father: the scientist who lost his dad – and resolved to travel to 1955 to save him: After losing his beloved father when he was 10, Ronald Mallett read HG Wells and Einstein. They inspired his eminent career as a theoretical physicist – and his lifelong ambition to build a time machine, Daniel Lavelle, The Guardian, 3/1/23
Birth of Mexican Volcano Inspires Scientists 80 Years Later, Maria Verza, AP News, 3/1/23: “The ground is still hot atop the crater of Paricutin — the first volcano of its kind to have its full life cycle documented by modern science when it erupted 80 years ago.”
Is the Alpha Wolf Idea a Myth? The idea that wolf packs are led by a merciless dictator, or alpha wolf, comes from old studies of captive wolves. In the wild, wolf packs are simply families, Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, 2/28/23
Hey, I miss you. I never even met you: let’s take a deep dive
Into each other’s bookshelves, until we find oceans of imagery
And metaphors we can discuss, dissect, not for ego’s sake, but for love.
—from “Hey,” Jose Hernandez Diaz
Health and Wellness
11 minutes of daily exercise could have a positive impact on your health, large study shows, Kristen Rogers, CNN, 3/1/23: “Beyond 150 minutes per week, any additional benefits were smaller.”
AI speeds up design of new antibodies that could target breast cancer: An artificial intelligence has designed new versions of trastuzumab, an antibody treatment against breast cancer, in just a few days – existing methods take weeks or months, Carissa Wong, NewScientist, 3/3/23
‘Forever chemicals’ disrupt key metabolic processes in children and teens: study, Sharon Udasin, The Hill, 2/22/23: “PFAS exposure changes the way the body metabolizes lipids and amino acids — the building blocks of fats and proteins, respectively — as well as the levels of thyroid hormones.”
Seven healthy habits may help cut dementia risk, study says: Researchers present initial findings from study that followed thousands of US women for about 20 years, Andrew Gregory, The Guardian, 2/27/23: “Beyond being active and looking after our heart, getting a good night’s sleep, challenging our brain and keeping connected to the people around us can all help reduce our chances of developing dementia.”
Kids’ glyphosate exposure linked to liver disease and metabolic syndrome: In a first-of-its kind study, researchers found children exposed to the controversial herbicide were more likely in early adulthood to have a collection of symptoms that increase risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke, Kate Raphael, Environmental Health News, 3/1/23
Long COVID Now Looks like a Neurological Disease, Helping Doctors to Focus Treatments: The causes of long COVID, which disables millions, may come together in the brain and nervous system, Stephani Sutherland, Scientific American, 3/1/23
How did the Covid pandemic begin? We need to investigate all credible hypotheses: The news has reignited the overheated public debate over the two prevailing hypotheses for the origin of Covid-19, but the case remains far from closed, Alison Young, The Guardian, 3/2/23: “The bottom line: nobody yet knows how this pandemic began, and the public and the press should scrutinize those making bold statements claiming the case is solved in favor of either of these two credible theories.”
There is a halo in search of each of us, but we are trees who lift our wooden limbs and moan like Scandinavians who have taken life far too seriously.
—from “The Publisher of Heaven,” Ron Padgett
Birds
New disease caused by plastics discovered in seabirds: Natural History Museum scientists say plasticosis, which scars digestive tract, likely to affect other types of bird too, Helena Horton, The Guardian, 3/3/23
Stripy wind turbines could prevent fatal seabird collisions: Based on principles of bird vision, researchers propose that seabird deaths at offshore wind farms would be reduced by painting black and white stripes on blades, Jason Arunn Murugesu, NewScientist, 2/28/23
Stunning Woodcock Is Now The Brightest Bird Known To Science: This bird has feathers that reflect significantly more light than any other known to humans, Jack Dunhill, IFLScience, 3/2/23
Birds in Alaska, 70 million years ago, Ned Rozell, Cordova Times, 3/3/23: “Scientists have discovered at least 14 species of dinosaurs lived there, as well as six types of mammals, some fish, and at least two kinds of birds.”
I too a long break from podcasting, but am now back at it. There’s a new interview with the very interesting poet and film maker Michael Wolfe at Writerscast.com (also on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, etc.)
From the report from the President’s Commission on the Status of Women: “Child care services are needed in all communities, for children of all kinds of families who may require day care, after-school care, or intermittent care. In putting major emphasis on this need, the Commission affirms that child care facilities are essential for women in many different circumstances, whether they work outside the home or not.”
The president who formed the Commission on the Status of Women was John F. Kennedy, and the commission issued its report in 1963.
Best wishes to everyone who reads The Weird Times, and special thanks to all of you who write with news and comments, objections, and critiques. You make it all worthwhile. Love to all of you. Baseball is back and Spring can’t be far behind. —David