The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 95, March 6, 2022 (V2 #43)
“But we’re facing all bad options. The objective is to pick the least-bad option.” —Paul Poast, professor of foreign policy and war, University of Chicago
"there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”—V.I Lenin.
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”—Leon Trotsky
“My life today is wonderful, I believe that I am needed…that’s the most important sense of life, that you are needed, that you are not just an emptiness that breathes and walks and eats something.” —Volodymyr Zelenskyy
“Rather than form nations that looked ever backward into history with a dangerous nostalgia, we chose to look forward to a greatness none of our many nations and peoples had ever known.” —Martin Kimani, Kenya’s Ambassador to the United Nations
“This war is going to get much, much worse and Putin is showing every sign of acting more and more insane. We cannot escape the conclusion that Russia’s war on Ukraine is evidence that the world is on the brink of catastrophe.”—Lucian K. Truscott IV
War and Peace
“How did the idealism of the 60’s turn into what’s left of Aleppo and the Twin Towers? When did ice cream sundaes at the luncheonette and cotton candy at the county fair become ISIS and suicide vests? What did we do to deserve Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson, huh? How much more can one generation fuck up? Can somebody tell me?” Lucian K. Truscott IV, Newsletter, 3/3/22
How to read perversion: Kremlin nuclear propaganda and Russian war aims, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 3/3/22: “The war on the ground in Ukraine is all too real. But the Russian war is also fought in and for unreality, to extend its hold on our minds as far as possible. When unreality spreads, reality becomes more murderous.”
Why Vladimir Putin has already lost this war, Yuval Noah Harari, The Guardian, 2/28/22: “The president who refused to flee the capital, telling the US that he needs ammunition, not a ride; the soldiers from Snake Island who told a Russian warship to “go fuck yourself”; the civilians who tried to stop Russian tanks by sitting in their path. This is the stuff nations are built from. In the long run, these stories count for more than tanks.”
Ukraine-Russia Crisis: Hacker Groups Take Sides As the Crisis Escalates: In the Ukraine-Russia conflict, cyber warfare is becoming the third front. In retaliation, Anonymous, a hacker group, has already begun a cyberwar against the Russian government, Sumeet Wadhwani, Toolbox Tech, 3/2/22
A Prayer for Volodymyr Zelensky: History has found the Ukrainian president, and his courage is remarkable to witness, Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 2/26/22
Ukraine Is in an Environmental Crisis Too: Russia’s attack is literally tearing the country apart, polluting air and water. Ukrainians will suffer long after the conflict ends, Gregory Barber, Matt Simon, Wired, 3/3/22
$1 per fill-up, Lucian K. Truscott IV, Newsletter, 3/4/22: “It’s time to end the fantasy that we can just sit here and let Ukrainians try to save their country and the West from Putin’s aggression without suffering some pain ourselves. We can’t.”
Russia’s Plan C. And Plan D…., Lewis Freedman, Comment is Freed, 3/3/22: “When we know more about how this war ends we will understand better how his regime ends.”
Putin’s Character Was Clear Long Before He Retreated to the Far End of the Table: Elected to bring order to Russia, Putin has plunged it into chaos. Revisiting her investigation into his origins, the author reveals how the former KGB officer’s fixed obsessions—and the West’s inability to confront him—set the stage for the catastrophe in Ukraine, Maureen Orth, Vanity Fair, 3/4/22
The Ambassador Caught Between Ukraine and Trump: In her first major interview since testifying against Trump, Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, discusses Russia’s war on the nation and Trump’s attack on her, David Remnick, New Yorker, 3/1/22
Fossil fuel companies are exploiting Russia's attack on Ukraine, Judd Legum, Tesnim Zekeria, Popular Information, 3/1/22
"How to talk about the war?" History and myth in Russian schools, from Novaya Gazeta, Timothy Snyder, 3/6/22: “History is not how one man smooths the past so that we all slide towards war. It is how many of us, each a little differently, confront the difficulties of the past and so imagine our own individual routes towards the future.”
Politicking
Two members of Congress spoke at a white nationalist convention. These corporations are supporting their reelection, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 2/28/22: National Association of Realtors ($120,000), Dell ($30,000), Walmart ($30,000), PriceWaterhouseCoopers ($30,000), American Airlines ($15,000), Anheuser-Busch ($15,000), AT&T ($15,000), Cigna ($15,000), Comcast ($15,000), CVS ($15,000), Deloitte ($15,000), Delta Airlines ($15,000), FedEx ($15,000), Ford ($15,000), Google ($15,000), Intel ($15,000), Johnson & Johnson ($15,000), JP Morgan ($15,000), Publix ($15,000), T-Mobile ($15,000), United Airlines ($15,000), Verizon ($15,000), Wells Fargo ($15,000), and Best Buy ($10,000)
It’s time to confront the Trump-Putin network, A stunning number of Trump’s closest associates had deep ties to the Kremlin. The significance of this cannot be overstated, Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian, 3/1/22
Pandemic Disruptions Created an Opportunity for Organic School Meals in California: A large Bay Area school district that serves low-income families is on its way to offering 100 percent organic food. It’s not alone, Lisa Held, Civil Eats, 2/28/22
America’s culture war is spilling into actual war-war: To US conservatives, the real enemy is the ‘militant left wing’ in the United States. How did it come to this? Thomas Zimmer, The Guardian, 3/4/22
Climate/Science
Toxic Nostalgia, From Putin to Trump to the Trucker Convoys: War is reshaping our world. Will we harness that urgency for climate action or succumb to a final, deadly oil and gas boom? Naomi Klein, The Intercept, 3/1/22
How omicron’s mutations make it the most infectious coronavirus variant yet: A unique anatomy may have fueled omicron’s dominance, Tina Hesman Saey, ScienceNews, 3/1/22
Honolulu Scores A Win Against Big Oil In Climate Change Lawsuit: Out of over a dozen climate change cases filed nationwide, Honolulu’s case is leading the pack, attorneys say, Christina Jedra, Honolulu Civil Beat, 2/27/22
Native Americans are at the heart of Yellowstone. After 150 years, they are finally being heard: America’s first national park inspired a global movement of ‘fortress conservation’, but we know today indigenous peoples are essential stewards of nature, James Hardcastle, The Guardian, 2/28/22
Climate Change is Harming the Planet Faster Than We Can Adapt, UN Says, Countries aren’t doing nearly enough to protect against the disasters to come as the planet keeps heating up, a major new scientific report concludes, Brad Plumer, Raymond Zhong, NY Times, 2/28/22 (gift article - no paywall): “The dangers of climate change are mounting so rapidly that they could soon overwhelm the ability of both nature and humanity to adapt unless greenhouse gas emissions are quickly reduced.”
‘Delay is Death,’ said UN Chief António Guterres of the New IPCC Report Showing Climate Impacts Are Outpacing Adaptation Efforts: The findings show the urgency of immediate climate action, but some scientists worry that the conflict in Ukraine may be distracting from the gravity of its message, Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News, 2/28/22
The Youth Movement Trying to Revolutionize Climate Politics: Sunrise has already shifted the conventional wisdom about climate change. Now it wants to create a mass movement, combining street protest with policy negotiation, while there’s still time, Andrew Marantz, New Yorker, 2/28/22
Climate change and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: A nexus? Climate change, and climate change policy, surely don’t operate in isolation from other important goings-on in the world, SueEllen Campbell, Yale Climate Connections, 2/28/22
Curbing Climate Change Should Include Electric School Buses: School buses achieve about six miles per gallon, making them among the least efficient vehicles on the road, Brett Berk, Architectural Digest, 2/28/22
We Need Nature-Positive Solutions to Address the Climate Crisis: “Nature-Based Solutions” and “Natural Climate Solutions” leave too much room for greenwashing, Daniel Zarin, Ensia, 3/1/22
Coronavirus came from Wuhan market and not Chinese lab, twin studies say: Two studies released by scientists but yet to be published in journals say virus did not emerge from Wuhan Institute of Virology, Martin Pengelly, The Guardian, 2/26/22
Glyphosate, explained: Questions swirl about the health effects of this common herbicide. We’ve got answers, Autumn Spanne, Environmental Health News, 3/2/22
Six behavior changes that can heal people and the planet: Lifestyle medicine expert Dr. Neha Pathak offers tips for better health and a safer climate, Yale Climate Connections, 3/4/22
Colorado bill aims to save bee populations by restricting pesticide use, Rob Harris, The Denver Channel, 3/3/22
Four Years On, New Experiment Sees No Sign of ‘Cosmic Dawn’ When astronomers tried to confirm a signal from the birth of the first stars after the Big Bang, they saw nothing, Ben Brubaker, Quanta Magazine, 2/28/22
Muscle strengthening lowers risk of death from all causes, study shows: Half an hour a week of activities such as gardening, sit-ups or yoga could help reduce the risk of dying from any cause by a fifth, Andrew Gregory, The Guardian, 2/28/22
Scientist Reveals How Stonehenge Likely Worked At Long Last: An archaeologist proposes that the monument is “a simple and elegant perpetual calendar” in a new study, Becky Ferreira, Vice, 3/2/22
Scientists Can Now Trace Earth's History in Individual Grains of Sand, David Nield, Science Alert, 3/3/22: “Even individual grains of sand can reveal the tectonic forces that created them, based on the age distribution of the sediment around them…”
Scientists want to create a library of every sound in the ocean: We chat with a sound researcher about underwater noise, Tess Joosse, Science, 2/25/22
How Mars lost its magnetic field — and then its oceans: Chemical changes inside Mars' core caused it to lose its magnetic field. This, in turn, caused it to lose its oceans. But how? Elizabeth Fernandez, Big Think, 2/25/22
The power of the sun: cleaning water and charging cell phones in the Navajo Nation: Solar power systems support off-grid water filtration and provide electricity, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 3/3/22
Can Cloud Seeding Help Quench the Thirst of the U.S. West? In the midst of an historic megadrought, states in the American West are embracing cloud seeding to increase snow and rainfall. Recent research suggests that the decades-old approach can be effective, though questions remain about how much water it can wring from the sky, James Dinneen, Yale Climate 360, 3/3/22
Women are more susceptible to Alzheimer’s Disease: new evidence, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Eurekalert, 3/2/22
Books, Poetry, Life
“When? Where? How?” Margaret Atwood Considers the Burning Questions of the Writing Life: “Failed again to find recipe box. Used this as an excuse for not working on overdue bird piece,” Margaret Atwood, LitHub, 3/1/22
How the Beat Generation Created the Uniform for Disaffected Youth, Sophie Wilson, LitHub, 3/1/22
On Rap’s Linguistic Twists and Turns, Daniel Levin Becker, LitHub, 2/28/22: “The point of rap, among others, is the pleasure of finding words that aren’t just transparently informative but challenging to use.”
Thousands of Russian Artists Denounce Invasion in Open Letter: More than 17,000 artists and cultural workers sounded the message: “No to War!”..."it is important to say that further escalation of the war will result in irreversible consequences for workers in culture and the arts,” Elaine Velie, Portside, 3/3/22
‘For our grandchildren’: the man recording the lives of Paraguay’s vanishing forest people: Mateo Sobode Chiqueno’s lifelong project compiling cassettes of the Ayoreo people’s stories, songs and struggles to survive is now the subject of an award-winning film, Nothing but the Sun, Lawrence Blair, The Guardian, 3/3/22
Jane Goodall and Margaret Atwood Still Have Hope for the Planet: The writer and conservationist on the urgent fight for climate justice, their legacies as feminist trailblazers, and finding optimism in disheartening times, Harper’s Bazaar, 3/1/22
The Empire of the Archive: On the Relentless Contemporary Deluge of Images, Maël Renouard, LitHub, 3/4/22: “Today, images come one after another, devour each other, replace each other pitilessly.”
Angela Davis on the power of protest: ‘We can’t do anything without optimism:’ In 1972, the former Black Panther was facing the death penalty. Five decades after the campaign for her release went global, she still believes people are the ‘motors of history,’ Simon Hattenstone, The Guardian, 3/5/22
Come, we will dance sedate quadrilles,
A pallid polka or a yelping shimmy
Over these sunken sodden breeding-grounds! —Ern Malley
The Poet Who Never Was: Ern Malley, David Lehman, Best American Poetry, 2/25/22: “THE GREATEST literary hoax of the 20th century was concocted by a couple of Australian soldiers at their desks in the offices of the Victoria Barracks, land headquarters of the Australian army, on a quiet Saturday in October 1943.”
Ukraine’s Iryna Baturevych: ‘Solidarity Is Our Superpower,’ Porter Anderson, Publishing Perspectives, 3/4/22: “Interview: Iryna Baturevych at the publishing magazine Chytomo has launched an English-language edition for the world book business.”
Editor’s Note, Srikanth Reddy, Poetry Magazine, March 2022: “Overlooked in her lifetime and ours, Margaret Esse Danner (1915–1984) made an art of looking intently at the world around her. As the first Black woman on Poetry’s editorial staff, she routinely sought out other overlooked writers to publish under the magazine’s “Open Door” policy during her workday at the office.”
The Painted Lady
The Painted Lady is a small African
Butterfly gayly toned deep tan and peach
That seems as tremulous and delicately sheer
As the objects I treasure, yet this cosmopolitan
Can cross the sea at the icy time of the year
In the trail of the big boats, to France.
Mischance is as wide and grey as the lake here
In Chicago. Is there strength enough in my
Peach paper rose or lavender sea-laced fan?
—Margaret Esse Danner
Birds Will
A moon-watching robot can demystify what migrating birds do at night: When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, it’s the perfect time to watch for migrating birds, Charlotte Hu, Popular Science, 2/25/22
Alaska Science Forum: Bird havens on a trans-continental journey: Right about now, songbirds in Brazil are shifting on their perches…Ned Rozell, Juneau Empire, 2/25/22
23 species proposed for delisting, now extinct, Deborah Byrd, EarthSky, 9/21/21: “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFW) said on September 29, 2021, that it proposes delisting 23 species from the Endangered Species Act, due to extinction.”
An injured bald eagle learns how to fly again, The Dodo, The Kids Should See This (video)
Publishing Talks: interview with George Slowik Jr. on the 150th anniversary of Publishers Weekly.
MLB cancels regular season games as labor negotiations with players union implode, Chelsea Janes, Washington Post, 3/1/22. Ed. Note to the billionaire baseball team owners: don’t you realize there’s a war on? If we don’t have Major League baseball to engage with, your core audience will move on to other distractions. Don’t take us for granted.
Read of the Week (in which Ed. makes a suggestion – if you only have time to read one of the many articles linked in TWT, read this one: Yachts & War, Scott Galloway, No Malice, 3/4/22: “Money is an addictive substance. The U.S. and Europe are the biggest dealers, and Russia has been using for several decades now.”
An Excerpt from Mondegreen, a New Novel of Wartime Ukraine, Volodymyr Rafeyenko, LitHub, 3/2/22: “Well, who knows, master, what this is all leading to, Haba shrugged his shoulders, but I am learning a language. A language so musical and magical. One that leads you to all kinds of nonsense and multicolored idiocy, it calls you to March madness, to holy hollow November. You can mumble non-stop about anything in this language for a hundred thousand years, and speak gobbledygook with your tangled, refugee tongue. (Gobelen? Gusk? Let’s home in on that rabbit and his balls).”
Buy books by Ukrainian writers: HURI: Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University publishes a terrific list of books. “Since its inception, the primary mission of HURI Publications has been the encouragement and dissemination of the highest caliber of scholarship in the field of Ukrainian studies.”
It seems ever more difficult to find hope, to remain optimistic, to imagine a world ahead of us that is not bleak, grim and desperate. But as Angela Davis inspiringly says “Our job is to cultivate hope, and that is what I always try to do.”
Imagine we are farming hope, beauty and love. It’s almost spring, planting time, let’s get our hands dirty in the fertile soil of our imagined future.
Love to all who are receiving this. —David
