The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 217, July 7, 2024 (V5 #9)
A great tragedy is playing out in America today. We should remember what stands to be lost.—Steve Schmidt
America’s immense heritage of idealistic ability is squandered by a system which divides all power between the prejudices of the ignorant many and the ruthlessness of the plutocratic few.—Bertrand Russell
Be careful, when a democracy is sick, fascism comes to its bedside, but it is not to inquire about its health.—Albert Camus.
I view myself as a bridge, nothing else. There’s an entire generation of leaders… They are the future of this country.—Joe Biden
Books, Music, Art, Culture
Remembering Samuel Roth, the Bookseller Who Defied America’s Obscenity Laws: on Free Speech, Book Bans and Court-Mandated Censorship, Then and Now, Ed Simon, LitHub, 7/3/24: “The line between filth and edification, smut and transcendence, porn and literature, isn’t to be evaluated by judges and censors…but by readers.”
Diorama of Love: Love is wherever love is felt, and with love being a complete statement, well, that’s enough, Addie Citchens, New Yorker, 7/1/24: “I don’t know shit about love. But I am learning, both from what I devour and from what I spit out.”
Totally wired: why are so many young people addicted to video games? Locked in their bedrooms, playing video games into the small hours, children as young as 10 years old are now addicted to their consoles, Tim Lewis, The Guardian, 7/7/24: “The force with which gaming disorder has presented itself has been quite overwhelming and unexpected.”
51,000-year-old cave painting may be earliest scene depicted through art: The artwork, an example of early storytelling, shows three humanoid figures and a pig. Sulawesi residents of that era were “besotted” with painting pigs, an expert said, Frances Vinall, Washington Post, 7/3/24
Georgia lawsuit challenges anti-LGBTQ+ book bans over ‘real harms:’ Lawsuit says student and youth groups hurt after teacher was fired for reading My Shadow is Purple to students, Timothy Pratt, The Guardian, 7/3/24: “LGBTQ-plus students are … not just excluded [under school district policies], they’re affirmatively told, ‘You don’t belong here.’”
How Influencers and Algorithms Are Creating Bespoke Realities for Everyone: Disinformation researcher Renée DiResta's new book lays out how people’s realities are shaped not by facts and evidence, but by black boxes, niche celebrities, and online communities, David Gilbert, Wired, 7/4/24: “Americans can now live in entirely different realities depending on where they get their daily news and information.” Book: Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality
You Americans, you are so naïve. You think evil is going to come into your houses wearing big black boots. It doesn’t come like that. Look at the language. It begins in the language.—Joseph Brodsky
Politics, Economics, Technology
How to Stop Fascism: Five Lessons of the Nazi Takeover, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 7/5/24: “1. Voting matters 2. Coalitions are necessary 3. Conservatives should be conservative 4. Big business should support democracy 5. Citizens should not obey in advance. Much of fascism is a bluff.”
Word Are Deeds: the Power of Speech to Shape the Future: “Your opponents would love you to believe that it’s hopeless, that you have no power,” Rebecca Solnit, LitHub, 7/3/24: “What has most moved me in public life over the past thirty or forty years is people facing terrible odds without surrendering.”
When Will There Be a Real Interview of Donald Trump? Stephen Beschloss, America, America, 7/6/24: “What will it take to shift the dynamic and motivate the media—currently on Biden hyperdrive—to escalate its coverage of Trump’s lies, cognitive unraveling, track record of cruelty and violence, and ongoing hostility to democracy that puts America’s future in such jeopardy?”
Why Aren’t We Talking About Trump’s Fascism? Joe Biden has created a distraction from the existential question that should define this election, Jeet Heer, The Nation, 7/5/24: “Imagine if President Harris were doing what President Biden has singularly failed to do in the last few months: make clear to the public the real stakes of the 2024 election.”
Get a grip, Democrats: We need to save the country from Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, Lucian K. Truscott IV, Newsletter, 7/7/24: “Maybe all these Democratic “officials” and “strategists” and “donors” might consider taking some of their venom and squirting it toward the other candidate for the presidency, the lying felonious rapist Donald Trump, who is telling us exactly what fascist plans he has for this country.”
Do It Yourself Democracy: Let’s Fight the Supreme Court, Jim Hightower, The Lowdown, 7/2/24: “They’ve turned the Supreme Court into a political operation – so it’s the duty of us grassroots democracy champions to fight their usurpation, not only in the presidential race, but carrying the fight into every political forum. Don’t wait on national “leaders” – they lack the guts for standing up to runaway power.”
Terrified?! Time to Fight the Dictatorship: Trump and MAGA want you to quit. Get Over Your Fear. Harness Anger. Let’s Organize, Malcolm Nance, Special Intelligence, 7/3/24: “MAGA thinks Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans are as weak and feeble as they make Joe Biden out to be … they’re wrong. We are the proverbial Sleeping Giant. It is time to embrace the anger and the hate for those who have brought this disaster upon America.”
Savior Complex: Biden’s tragedy is that he has come to feel that he alone can rescue America, Fintan O’Toole, NY Review of Books, 7/2/24: “Biden’s motivations are infinitely more benign than Trump’s, but he has ended up in the same place: with the great delusion of “I alone.” This is a face-off that Trump will always win.”
This is how Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump like a drum: Biden loves America. Trump hates his country. There it is, Lucian K. Truscott IV, Newsletter, 7/2/24
Patriotism as Defense of America's Multiracial Democracy: Jan. 6 sought to keep Donald Trump in office and Kamala Harris out of power, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, 7/4/24: “To counter this authoritarian agenda, we must explicitly associate patriotism with defense of democracy, and highlight the stability and productivity of America as a multiracial society. The aspiration of freedom for everyone is no fairy tale. It reflects our best traditions and civil rights history. A patriotism built on that heritage can be powerful indeed.”
The US supreme court just completed Trump’s January 6 coup attempt: The court’s conservative justices have thrown aside the rule of law – and their own legitimacy – to serve one man, Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian, 7/3/24: “January 6 was an attack on the constitution and so was 1 July. That no one is above the law has been a pillar of this nation and a cherished value since the 18th century; to knock it down in the 21st destabilizes structures and values that have stood these two centuries and more.”
We should all be terrified of Trump’s Project 2025: The presumptive Republican nominee has promised to give rightwing evangelical Christians what they want – and more, Robert Reich, The Guardian, 7/5/24: “Project 2025 is, in short, the plan to implement what Donald Trump has said he wants to do if he’s re-elected.”
Women Under Fire: The GOP's Radical Agenda to Penalize "Sinners:” That’s what’s really going on here: for the zealots in the most extreme parts of the forced birth movement — which has taken control of the GOP — it’s all about the punishment of women...Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 7/5/24
Listen Closely to the Men Crafting the GOP’s Anti-Abortion Policy: The main dispute within Trump’s Republican Party is not about how severely to punish women for having abortions, but merely how to “frame the argument,” Melissa Gira Grant, New Republic, 7/3/24
Will the Supreme Court Reverse the Right to Gay Marriage Next Year? Only Congress can overturn a Supreme Court decision, so holding onto the presidency, House, and Senate this fall represent the only way to quickly deal with this out-of-control rightwing Court...Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 7/1/24
4 takeaways from the Supreme Court’s Trump immunity decision: The ruling is a win for Trump for a few reasons and is likely to reverberate in the 2024 campaign and beyond. Here’s what it means, Aaron Blake, Washington Post, 7/1/24: “The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.” (No paywall)
‘The Dred Scott of Our Time:’ The Supreme Court has invested the presidency with quasi-monarchial powers, repudiating the foundational principle of the rule of law, Sean Wilentz, NY Review of Books, 7/4/24: “The Roberts Court has descended to a level of shame reserved until now for the Roger B. Taney Court that decided the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857. Just as that court’s majority sought to suppress the antislavery Republican Party and to help permanently secure the Slave Power’s control over American law and government, so the Roberts Court majority has sought, thus far successfully, to protect Trump from prosecution and to secure radical changes in American law friendly to MAGA authoritarianism. The Supreme Court has once again willfully placed itself at the center of a presidential election on which the future of American democracy turns.”
The Danger of Institutional Nostalgia: What is a democracy without the tools to put democratic ideals into action? John Warner, Biblioracle Recommends, 7/7/24: “We are now captive to institutions like the Electoral College and a Supreme Court that are, arguably, thwarting the democratic will of the people.”
RFK Jr.’s Family Doesn’t Want Him to Run. Even They May Not Know His Darkest Secrets: A shocking photograph. Blowback from a Trump meeting. Alleged sexual assault. The Kennedys have voiced support for Joe Biden, but certain aspects of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s character are only just now coming to light, Joe Hagan, Vanity Fair, 7/2/24
Energy Bell: The sketch of an idea: How can we get America back to the forefront of energy research? Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 7/7/24: “Basically, the U.S. needs more and better energy technology — better batteries, better solar panels, better electrical grid systems, better electric motors, better nuclear reactors, fusion power, green hydrogen and ammonia, fuel synthesis, and so on. This is a priority right now…”
Israel risking disastrous war against Hezbollah for political reasons, says former US official: Harrison Mann, military expert who quit over Gaza, says ruinous war in Lebanon would pull US into regional conflict, Julian Borger, The Guardian, 7/2/24
A ‘Moral, Strategic, and Diplomatic Abyss:’ In the latest round of disputes within Israel’s ruling coalition, the eliminationist, messianic far right seems poised to triumph, Joshua Leifer, NY Review of Books, 7/2/24: “ Although committed religious Zionists only constitute between 10 and 15 percent of Israel’s population (and one third of settlers in the occupied West Bank), over the last several decades they have won outsize power over parts of the Israeli state.”
hold my hand
when everyday living
declares it is
at war with life.
—from “I Pick Away,” Margaret Randall
Science, Environment, Climate Change
The climate stakes of the election just got much higher: By nixing the Chevron doctrine, the Supreme Court gave presidentially-appointed judges more power over the planet's fate, Emily Atkin, Heated, 7/2/24
Driftless Water Defenders Go on the Offensive in Iowa: New group mobilizes citizens to protect Iowa’s “last island of ecological integrity,” Nina Elkadi, Barn Raiser, 7/1/24: “…there are always these issues at the core of what it takes for human beings to thrive, and for young children to grow, and to have a sense of community.”
How Do We Balance the Needs of the Earth With the Needs of Humanity? the Arbitrary Nature of the Laws That Govern Our Relationship With the Land, C.L. Skach, LitHub, 7/2/24: “When it comes to helping people take care of their health and the health of the earth…the law seems to be far behind.”
Water Scarcity Likely to Increase in the Coming Decades: Hydrological modeling suggests that by 2100 more than 65% of the world’s population might, at least sporadically, lack access to clean water, Katherine Kornei, Eos, 7/2/24
How cover crops are helping a Kansas farmer adapt to climate change: At Lucinda Stuenkel’s farm, spring oats and peas are enriching her soil and helping it retain more moisture, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 7/3/24
‘It’s the future of sugar’: new technology feeds Vermont maple syrup boom amid climate crisis: The season to tap trees is now earlier and longer, but new processes and generations are helping the industry thrive, Olivia Gieger, The Guardian, 7/2/24
The Race to Save Glacial Ice Records Before They Melt Away: As glaciers melt around the globe, scientists are racing to retrieve ice cores that contain key historical records of temperature and climate that are preserved in the ice. Researchers are also pushing to gather ancient relics locked in the ice before they are lost to warming, Nicola Jones, Yale Environment 360, 7/1/24
More Whale Falls Found off Los Angeles than in the Rest of the World Combined: A mysterious discovery reveals how little we know about the deep ocean, Douglas Main, Hakai, 7/3/24
Ants can perform life-saving amputations on their wounded, study says: Scientists say the study on Florida Carpenter ants is the first recorded example of a nonhuman animal amputating a fellow member of its species to save its life, Leo Sands, Washington Post, 7/3/24
The Caribbean has a defense system against deadly hurricanes — but it’s vanishing: Hurricane Beryl and other superstorms would be much more dangerous without these iconic ocean animals, Benji Jones, Vox, 7/3/24: “Research shows that coral reefs help dozens of countries avert billions of dollars in flood damage each year, in the Caribbean and globally.”
Gaining Ground on the East Coast’s Intracoastal Waterway: Scientists hope a sediment-laying strategy can help preserve the marine highway while restoring marshlands, Mac Carey, Undark, 7/1/24: “If they are not able to accumulate enough sediment, then the marshes will be inundated more and more frequently.”
The Hunt for the Most Efficient Heat Pump in the World: A new generation of engineers has realized they can push heat pumps to the limit, but just how much heat you can extract depends on your setup, Chris Baraniuk, Wired, 7/2/24
Why scientists think they may finally have found a way to recycle clothes: It’s almost impossible to turn old threads into new clothes, but scientists are working to change that, Nicolás Rivero, Washington Post, 7/5/24: “Researchers at the University of Delaware are proposing a new recycling technique that breaks down blended fabrics using chemicals and microwaves. The researchers say the process takes 15 minutes and can dissolve any blend of cotton, polyester, nylon and spandex into molecules that can be used to make new fabrics or products like dyes, electronics and tires.”
Tracing the Hidden Hand of Magnetism in the Galaxy: Susan Clark is helping to unravel the mysterious workings of the Milky Way’s magnetic field, a critical missing piece of the galactic puzzle, Jay Bennett, Quanta, 7/1/24: “How is it that, probably in the process of forming the galaxy, the motions of the gas were able to amplify and distribute the magnetic field to have the structure that we observe today?”
Health, Wellness
Mini-Strokes, Gut Problems: Scientists See Links to an Old Bout of Covid: Feeling ill? The cause might be years old, Sumathi Reddy, Wall Street Journal, 7/2/24: “A new Nature Medicine study found that health problems stemming from even mild Covid infections can emerge as many as three years afterward. The study found a greater risk three years later of problems in the gut, brain and lungs, including irritable bowel syndrome, mini-strokes and pulmonary scarring.” (No paywall)
Where There’s Smoke… How Wildfires Across North America Are Making Children Sick: The Impact of Climate Change on Her Career as a Pediatrician, Debra Hendrickson, LitHub, 7/3/24: “Wildfire smoke causes more health problems for children than just brief coughing and wheezing.” Book: The Air They Breathe: A Pediatrician on the Frontlines of Climate Change
Coffee, eggs and white rice linked to higher levels of PFAS in human body: Study that researchers say highlights chemicals’ ubiquity also shows PFAS association with seafood and red meat, Tom Perkins, The Guardian, 7/4/24
Health Care Should Be Designed for the Extremes of Life: Much of health care is designed with the “comfortable middle” of society in mind, says designer Yves Behar, when it should be tailored to children, the elderly, and those with disabilities, Joao Madeiros, Wired, 7/5/24
Birds
The Owls Who Came From Away: Over the past 80 years, one of the most resilient and hearty owls has practically engulfed a continent. Not everyone is pleased, Jude Isabella, Hakai, 7/2/24: “Everywhere they turn up, barred owls garner admirers.” Barred Owl call.
Attacked on All Sides: Wading Birds Nest in New York’s Harbor Islands: The migratory birds face habitat loss due to development, predation, human disturbance and climate change, Lauren Dalban, Inside Climate News, 7/6/24: “These wading birds also face potential contamination of their food supply. They’re top predators—they’ll eat anything from fish, to crustaceans, to amphibians, to rodents. This also means they operate as important indicators of the health of the harbor.”
The Monumental Effort to Understand Migrating Shorebirds: Community science and Audubon bring unparalleled coordination to understand shorebirds and improve wetlands, Shaela Adams, Audubon, 7/2/24: “Migrating shorebirds are indicators of ecosystem quality at a grand scale—they tell us how Earth itself is doing.”
Book and author news
An extraordinary glimmer of Hope: What a troubled world can learn from a shepherd girl, Ken Whyte, SHuSH, 7/5/24 Book: Hope is a Woman’s Name: My Journey as a Bedouin Palestinian Activist in Israel, Amal Elsana Ahl’Jooj
The earth shall rise on new foundations, dancing, singing and the touch of love and the hosanna of freedom
—from “Arise,” Meridel LeSeuer
We are living in a time of chaos — which means that it’s the right time to organize ourselves and take action. Even if it is just to retain some sense of sanity, I intend to take every opportunity I can to convince everyone I can to get engaged and stay active. If you have ideas to share, please let me know.
I say this every week because I really mean it — 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 your own news. Hearing from you makes this all worthwhile.
Above all, stay well; share love; work for good. We need each other now, more than ever.
Love always—David
Thank you David