The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 206, April 21, 2024 (V4 #50)
It is a privilege to see so much confusion.—Marianne Moore
Language is never a mistake.—Robert Duncan
I feel in opposition to almost everything.—Elaine May
Books, Music, Art, Culture
Nicole Eisenman is the most inventive U.S. painter working right now: One of our most celebrated living artists is the subject of a superb retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 4/19/24
5 Things to Love About Nick Lowe, Al Cattabiani, Culture Sonar, 4/18/24: “His advice as a producer, “Just bash it out, we’ll tart it up later,” is about as rock-n-roll an attitude as you could want.”
This trans author toured red-state libraries. What she found might surprise you, Diana Goetsch, LA Times, 4/17/24: “On election night in 2016, when Florida was called for Donald Trump, I felt, instantly, my country get narrower.”
Red states threaten librarians with prison — as blue states work to protect them, Hannah Natanson, Anumita Kaur, Washington Post, 4/16/24: “To attack library books, you’re attacking the ability to learn, grow, think.”
How Perfectly Can Reality Be Simulated? Video-game engines were designed to mimic the mechanics of the real world. They’re now used in movies, architecture, military simulations, and efforts to build the metaverse, Anna Wiener, New Yorker, 4/15/24: “We don’t even know the equations we need to solve in order to simulate humans. Nobody’s invented them yet.”
On the Important, Joyous Work of Running an Independent Bookstore: “At a great store you can look at twelve well-selected, serendipitous linear inches and find a universe,” Paul Yamazaki, LitHub, 4/19/24: “The more bookstores you go into, the more you’ll realize how many different ways there are to be curious.”
“Costs on all Sides”: Annie Dorsen on ‘Prometheus Firebringer,” Miriam Felton-Dansky, Public Books, 4/28/24: “Simultaneously, she appears onstage giving a lecture composed of rigorously cited quotations meditating on AI, the nature of language, and the dangers of engaging deeply with technologies whose workings are kept private while their impacts are enormous.”
Carl Erskine, Dodgers pitcher and last of ‘Boys of Summer,’ dies at 97: A standout hurler for Brooklyn in the 1940s and 1950s, he was a close ally of Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier, Matt Schudel, Washington Post, 4/16/24: “Mr. Erskine became an anchor of the Brooklyn pitching staff at a time when New York was the hub of the baseball universe, with three major league teams.”
Dickey Betts, hit-crafting mainstay of Allman Brothers Band, dies at 80: He was a founding member of the group and wrote and sang ‘Ramblin’ Man,’ which became the band’s only major top-10 success, Terence McArdle, Washington Post, 4/18/24
Well, my father was a gambler down in Georgia
And he wound up on the wrong end of a gun
And I was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus
Rollin' down highway 41
—from “Ramblin’ Man,” Allman Brothers, written by Forrest Richard Betts
Politics, Economics, Tech
Can Voter Suppression Hand the 2024 Election to Trump? While it requires lawful due process — your day in court — to take away your gun, red state governors and secretaries of state can take away your vote without even telling you, Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 4/15/24
The Real Youth-Vote Shift to Watch: No, young voters aren’t definitively turning toward Trump. But there’s a more specific dynamic to pay attention to, Elaine Godfrey, The Atlantic, 4/18/24: “The real themes to watch in 2024, experts told me, are youth turnout and the growing gender divide.”
How does the election feel around the country? 5 writers capture the vibe, Dave Barry, Angela Garbes, Melissa Fay Greene, John Grogan, Charles Yu, Washington Post, 4/16/24: “This year, I’m staying mostly quiet. Because what do I know? About anything? Am I so sure I’m right?”
A Reckoning Is Coming for the Democrats: What small towns taught me, Sam Kahn, Persuasion, 4/19/24: “Democrats have cast themselves for at least a half-century as custodians of a crumbling New Deal without a new, concrete vision.”
Here’s a Clever Way to Uncover America’s Voting Deserts: Mathematicians are using topological abstractions to find places poorly served by polling stations, Lyndie Chiou, Wired, 4/21/24
Meet the people spending $800,000 or more to make Trump the next president, Judd Legum, Tesnim Zekeria, Popular Information, 4/17/24: “Trump's biggest supporters are directing their largess to a newly-formed joint fundraising committee called Trump 47.”
Poll: Majority of Americans Prefer Sleeping Trump to Conscious Version, Andy Borowitz, Borowitz Report, 4/17/24
Judges Are Letting Trump Run Amok In and Around Court: Here’s how they can stop him, Hassan Ali Kanu, American Prospect, 4/19/24: “At this point, giving Trump more passes just cements the notion that this particular defendant is actually above the law.”
The Small Miracle That Is Trump's Trial, And The Challenge It Poses To His Authoritarian Personality, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, 4/18/24: “The narcissism and the ego needs of the strongman simply cannot bear the feeling of being constrained by others.”
The New Rules of Political Journalism: In this election, the reporting strategies of the past will not be enough, Charles Sykes, The Atlantic, 4/17/24: “Media outlets will need all the credibility they can muster when they try to sound the alarm that none of this is normal. And it is far more important to get it right than to get it fast, because every lapse will be weaponized.”
‘Media firestorm’: Israel protest at professor’s home sparks heated free-speech debate: Pro-Palestinian students interrupted a dinner held by a top free speech defender at Berkeley. A polarized and very public controversy has followed, J. Oliver Conroy, The Guardian, 4/20/24: “…censorship of speech relating to the war in Israel and Gaza is censorship of speech relating to a war in which the US is deeply implicated.”
The Fascists are Back, Steve Schmidt, The Warning, 4/20/24: “ We live in an age in which elected officials, journalists, commentators, jurors, judges, and anyone who participates in public life, debate or duties, is routinely threatened with being killed, harmed, ruined or destroyed for daring to engage in the practice of constitutionally protected rights. This is fascism, and it is everywhere.”
Political Warfare and Congress: My Testimony from 17 April, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 4/19/24: “Democracy is in decline, dragged down by the autocratic lie. The autocrats offer no new visions; instead they lie about democracies and insert lies into democracies. The test of disinformation is its power to alter the course of crucial events, such as wars and elections.”
Secret Russian foreign policy document urges action to weaken the U.S., Catherine Belton, Washington Post, 4/17/24: “The document for the first time provides official confirmation and codification of what many in the Moscow elite say has become a hybrid war against the West.”
Unions, the Past and the Future of Democracy: Without strong unions, “democratic capitalism” is an oxymoron, Michael Podhorzer, Weekend Reading, 4/18/24: “Greater rates of union representation not only reduce economic inequality by ensuring that working people are rightly compensated for their efforts; greater rates of union representation also reduce political inequality, the cancer ravaging America today.”
Five things to be optimistic about in America today: Enough doom and gloom, let's allow ourselves a moment of happiness, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 4/18/24: “America is becoming safer…We’re making progress against climate change…The U.S. economy is growing pretty fast…Younger generations are doing better than their parents…Wage inequality is falling.”
‘Why the silence? Why the inaction? It breaks my heart’: Malala and Jennifer Lawrence take on the Taliban: The Oscar-winner and the Nobel laureate have teamed up to make Bread & Roses, a new film about the abuse of women in Afghanistan. In an emotional interview, they warn that the west ignores its message at their peril, Catherine Shoard, The Guardian, 4/18/24
What do leaders mean when they say they’re committed to gender equality, when they don’t take action to protect women’s rights?—Malala
The Middle East Needs a Ceasefire Now, Daoud Kuttab, Project Syndicate, 4/16/24: “Paradoxically, Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel could generate an equally unprecedented breakthrough for peace in the Middle East. But first, the United Nations Security Council must pass a binding resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and across the region.”
Israel: The Way Out: If Israel is to survive, physically and spiritually, it needs to undergo, collectively, a sea change in its vision of reality and face some unpleasant though obvious facts, David Shulman, NY Review of Books, 5/9/24 issue: “Survival depends on sharing the land between these two peoples. The settlement project in the West Bank has to end. The barbarian extremists on both sides, as if colluding together, will, given half a chance, kill us all.”
But now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken
—from “Spring and All,” William Carlos Williams
Science, Environment
Insects and Other Animals Have Consciousness, Experts Declare: A group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic possibility” that insects, octopuses, crustaceans, fish and other overlooked animals experience consciousness, Dan Falk, Quanta, 4/19/24: “…a bee’s brain contains only about a million neurons, compared to some 86 billion in the case of humans. But each of those bee neurons may be as structurally complex as an oak tree.”
Dragons, sea toads and the longest creature ever seen found on undersea peaks off South America: Underwater mountains are biodiversity hotspots and researchers exploring the Salas y Gómez ridge off Chile have found 50 species probably new to science. How much more has yet to be discovered? Sophia Quaglia, The Guardian, 4/15/24
Crunching worms, squeaking voles, drumming ants: how scientists are learning to eavesdrop on the sounds of soil: More than 50% of the planet’s species live in the earth below our feet, but only a fraction have been identified – so far, Phoebe Weston, The Guardian, 4/19/24
‘Water is more valuable than oil’: the corporation cashing in on America’s drought: In an unprecedented deal, a private company purchased land in a tiny Arizona town – and sold its water rights to a suburb 200 miles away. Local residents fear the agreement has ‘opened Pandora’s box,’ Maanvi Singh, The Guardian, 4/16/24: “One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the west’s smallest rural enclaves.”
The People Will Save the Planet, Not the Courts: The European Court of Human Rights has condemned Switzerland for its climate policy. It’s a dangerous overreach, Francois Valentin, Persuasion, 4/18/24
The “Epic Row” Over a New Epoch: Scientists, journalists, and artists often say that we live in the Anthropocene, a new age in which humans shape the Earth. Why do some leading geologists reject the term? Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker, 4/20/24: “What I hope is that the term ‘Anthropocene’ will be a warning to the world.”(—Paul Crutzen)
Removing PFAS from public water systems will cost billions and take time – here are ways to filter out some harmful ‘forever chemicals’ at home, Kyle Doudrick, The Conversation, 4/17/24: “For all the treatment options, make sure the device you choose is certified for PFAS by a reputable testing agency, and follow the recommended schedule for maintenance and filter replacement.”
Integrating Science, Art, and Engagement to Strengthen Communities: The CREATE Resilience project is demonstrating how to engage communities to address natural risks by linking art and science, Muki Haklay, Eos, 4/16/24
What is a passive house? These ultraefficient homes use up to 90% less energy for heating and cooling than conventional homes, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 4/17/24
‘A roof over our people’s heads’: the Indigenous US tribe building hempcrete homes: Minnesota’s Lower Sioux Indian Community is pioneering green building with its fully integrated hempcrete facility – a first in the country, Kate Nelson, The Guardian, 4/16/24
Earth’s record hot streak might be a sign of a new climate era, Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post, 4/19/24: “What if the statistical connections that we are basing our predictions on are no longer valid?”
The cicadas are coming, and some may become ‘flying saltshakers of death:’ This year’s double emergence will be a gold mine for scientists trying to unravel the many mysteries of periodical broods, Jason Bittel, Washington Post, 4/20/24
We must protect the global plastics treaty from corporate interference: A United Nations-backed agreement to end plastic pollution is within reach — but only if scientists, civil society and businesses unite against powerful vested interests, Martin Wagner, Nature, 4/17/24
The Digital Planet: Digital technologies may worsen environmental problems, but they can also assist in the protection and restoration of ecosystems —and strengthen our relationships with them, Michelle Nijhuis, NY Review of Books, 4/18/24
Is $38 trillion a lot? Because that's what we're throwing away, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 4/17/24: “A new study released today in Nature examines data from 1,600 regions of the earth for the last forty years, and concludes that by 2050 climate change will be causing economic damage worth $38 trillion every single year.” Yikes.
Global warming is coming for your shopping cart: A team of economists dig into a relatively under-studied area: Climate inflation, Sarah DeWeerdt, Anthropocene, 4/16/24: “Of the various climate factors analyzed, increases in average monthly temperature have the strongest effect on food prices.”
Making world history on Earth Day: The father of environmental history reflects on cats, dogs, and troglodytes, Karen Christensen, Newsletter, 4/19/24: “There is no design in this story, no tale of progress or overall providence, no final end in sight, but only relentless change and adaptation.”
Recommended reading for Earth Day - Seeds on Ice: Svalbard and the Global Seed Vault: New and Updated Edition (Revised), by Cary Fowler (who spurred the creation of the seed vault). It’s a great story and a wonderful book, and I am proud to be its publisher.
I am a shadow crossing ice
I am rusting knife in the water
I am pear tree bitten by frost
I uphold the mountain with my hand
—from “I am a Shadow,” Diane Di Prima
Health, Wellness
A blood test to detect cancer? Some patients are using them already, Marlene Cimons, Washington Post, 4/17/24: “It’s the unmet need we face in cancer.”
Kale, watermelon and even some organic foods pose high pesticide risk, analysis finds: Pesticides have contaminated the US fruit and vegetable supply – even some organics – a new analysis by Consumer Reports shows, Jane Spencer, The Guardian, 4/18/24
Well I do my best to understand dear
But you still mystify and I want to know why
I pick myself up off the ground
To have you knock me back down, again and again
And when I ask you to explain, you say
You've gotta be cruel to be kind, in the right measure
—from “Cruel to Be Kind,” Nick Lowe
Birds
No birdsong, no water in the creek, no beating wings: how a haven for nature fell silent: As the soundscape of the natural world began to disappear over 30 years, one man was listening and recording it all, Phoebe Weston, The Guardian, 4/16/24: “What’s happening here is just a small indication of what’s happening almost everywhere on an even larger scale.”
Urbanization is isolating fruit-loving birds and forests are paying the price: New research reveals just how vital frugivores are to forest health — and why humans are making it difficult, Matthew Rozsa, Salon, 4/18/24: “Given that the movement of larger frugivores is disproportionately affected by fragmentation, the limitation of their movements may strongly limit the recovery of large, late-succession trees, ultimately reducing the carbon storage potential of recovering ecosystems.”
How a Tiny Inland Shorebird Could Help Save the Great Salt Lake: With half its surface area gone, the country’s largest saline lake is verging on collapse due to the region’s overuse of water and climate change, threatening the ecosystem, Salt Lake City and Wilson’s phalarope, Wyatt Myskow, Inside Climate News, 4/17/24: “To restore healthy water levels of 4,198 feet above sea level to the Great Salt Lake in five years, about 3 million acre feet of freshwater need to enter it each year.”
World's oldest wild bird is 'actively courting' after losing long-term mate: Biologists on Midway Atoll in the North Pacific Ocean have spotted a septuagenarian female Laysan albatross named Wisdom flirting with potential mates months after the end of the nesting season, Sascha Pare, Live Science, 4/17/24
How Do We Celebrate Passover this Year? Rabbi Brant Rosen, Shalom Rav, 4/19/24: “If we read the Passover story as a story of Jewish liberation alone or – God forbid – Jewish liberation at the expense of others, we will not have fulfilled the requirements of the Passover seder. Through this approach to Passover, we reject the view that casts the Jewish people as eternal victims. We affirm that Jews are among a myriad of peoples who have struggled for liberation throughout history. And we reject the zero-sum mindset that other peoples’ freedoms must be swept aside in order to make way for ours… Sending blessings for a liberating Passover.”
I am mad by turns.
Those who lead me to the trough
can never
make me drink.
—from “I am Mad by Turns,” Jerry Rothenberg
Every week as I compile these stories and links, I think about hope and love, family, friends — all of you — and how we must stand together, lean on each other—despite all that challenges us, all our struggles, I know that we will prevail.
Especially this week, wherever you are, whoever you are with, whatever you are doing — 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. We need each other, now more than ever.
Love from here—David