The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 213, June 9, 2024 (V5 #5)
Democracy needs a ground to stand upon — and that ground is the truth.—Marcus Raskin
The key to the future is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.— Pete Seeger
Books, Music, Art, Culture
Nowhere But Up: In the wake of the 1964 Harlem riots, June Jordan and Buckminster Fuller’s plan to redesign the neighborhood suggested new possibilities for urban life, Nikil Saval, NY Review of Books, 6/8/24: “When it became firm that Bucky and I would collaborate on an architectural redesign of Harlem, I put my whole life on the line: Now I would work and work and work and wait on this beginning, as a writer, thinker, poet.”
Are We Doomed? Here’s How to Think About It: Climate change, artificial intelligence, nuclear annihilation, biological warfare—the field of existential risk is a way to reason through the dizzying, terrifying headlines, Rivka Galchen, New Yorker, 6/3/24: “A world can go on for thousands of years, and then all hell can break loose.”—Jerry Brown
Boys Get Everything, Except the Thing That’s Most Worth Having, Ruth Whippman, NY Times, 6/5/24: “…for boys, privilege and harm intertwine in complex ways — male socialization is a strangely destructive blend of indulgence and neglect. Under patriarchy, boys and men get everything, except the thing that’s most worth having: human connection.”
The spirituality trap: Women’s work and the problem of vocation, Lyz Lenz, Men Yell at Me, 6/5/24: “Basically, elevating the role of mother and homemaker to the level of holiness is a consolation prize for women getting kicked out of public life and losing their earning potential. It’s not a divine mandate; it’s just misogyny.”
My Friend, the Legendary Porn Queen: on Jane Kamensky’s Biography of Candida Royalle, Catherine Gigante-Brown, LitHub, 6/6/24: “Candice was feminist American history.” Book: Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below
The US librarian who sued book ban harassers: ‘I decided to fight back’: After Amanda Jones got death threats for speaking out against censorship, she sued her attackers and wrote a memoir, Olivia Empson, The Guardian, 6/2/24: “I hope librarians can read my book and feel like they’re not alone.” Book: That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America
Music Just Changed Forever: Making sense of AI’s impact on an entire field of human culture, James O’Malley, Persuasion, 6/7/24: “Just as The Bomb reshaped all of warfare, we’ve reached the point where AI is going to reshape all of music.”
This Is What It Looks Like When AI Eats the World: The web itself is being shoved into a great unknown, Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 6/7/24: “ Left unsaid is what happens to the raw material—the food—after it’s consumed and digested, its nutrients extracted. We don’t say it aloud, but we know what it becomes.”
How the Fridge Changed Flavor: From the tomato to the hamburger bun, the invention has transformed not just what we eat but taste itself, Nicola Twilley, New Yorker, 6/8/24: “Refrigeration enabled the creation of American icons such as the cheeseburger and the Budweiser, but it also created an entirely new culinary category: the leftover.”
The Junkification of Amazon, Part 172, Ken Whyte, SHuSH, 6/7/24: “The book channel is choked…. Unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, Amazon’s bookstore is an impenetrable jungle.”
Poem for Siddhārtha Gautama of the Shākyas: The Original Buddha
You say, “Close your eye to the butterfly!”
I say, “Don’t blink!”—June Jordan
Politics, Economics
Big Food, Big Profits, Big Lies: While blaming inflation for rising prices, the country’s biggest food and restaurant companies are raking in billions and showering shareholders with payouts, Veronica Riccobene, The Lever, 6/3/24
CEOs made nearly 200 times what their workers got paid last year, Mae Anderson, Paul Harloff, Barbara Ortutay, AP News, 6/3/24: “The median pay package for CEOs rose to $16.3 million, up 12.6%, according to data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar.”
How many of our "facts" about society, health, and the economy are fake? The rise in maternal mortality, the fall in geographic mobility, the rise in teen suicide, and many other "facts" are being called into question, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 6/6/24: “ The unfortunate fact is that social science, public health, and any other fields that rely on observational data are simply not very precise.”
Asylum-seekers at the Rio Grande near the U.S.-Mexico border in Matamoros, Mexico, on May 11, 2023. An immigration scholar explains why − and it’s not for the reasons that some GOP lawmakers claim, William McCorkle, The Conversation, 6/4/24: “…closing the border permanently – as former President Donald Trump and other right-wing lawmakers have sought to do – would be a mistake and not in the best interests of national security, the U.S. economy and, ultimately, the lives of asylum-seekers.”
The Biden Conundrum: Who Ya Gonna Call? Joe Klein, The Sanity Clause, 6/5/24: “It would be difficult for George Washington to serve as President right now, given the boorish public square.”
Going from Democracy… to Plutocracy… and Now to Kleptocracy, Jim Hightower, Lowdown, 6/4/24: “This sordid palace intrigue is the product of the right-wing Supreme Court’s 2010 edict letting selfish wealthy interests secretly dump unlimited sums of corporate money into our elections. They’re turning our democratic ideals into a kleptocracy.”
Lies, false equivalence and other media failures in the aftermath of Trump's trial: The felon now claims he never said "lock her up" — and other pieces of post-verdict nonsense, Margaret Sullivan, American Crisis, 6/4/24: “Where are the newspaper editorials demanding that Trump should end his campaign?”
Donald Trump Is Plotting His Next Crime, Marc Elias, Democracy Docket, 6/5/24: “We don’t yet know the exact details, but we know it involves subverting the will of the voters and undermining free and fair elections. And we know that he will spare nothing and no one who gets in his way.”
The Supreme Court Is About to Decide the Future of Free Speech: A cluster of rulings this month could define online communication for years to come, Nadine Strossen, Persuasion, 6/4/24: “Perhaps all these cases should turn on the same timeless verity that the whole Court forcefully implemented in Miami Herald v. Tornillo: namely, that we should avoid a cure that is worse than the disease.”
Justice Clarence Thomas Acknowledges He Should Have Disclosed Free Trips From Billionaire Donor: The trips include vacations in Indonesia and at the exclusive, men’s-only Bohemian Grove retreat, which were first reported by ProPublica last year, Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica, 6/7/24
U.C. Berkeley’s Leader, a Free Speech Champion, Has Advice for Today’s Students: Tone It Down: “Just because you have the right to say something doesn’t mean it’s right to say,” said Carol Christ, who is retiring as chancellor at the end of this month, Kurt Streeter, NY Times, 6/7/24: “If you value your community, you have to find ways of sharing your views that are not vitriolic, that are not needlessly hurtful to other people.” (No paywall)
47. Amnesia: A note on rewriting history, Leah Sottile, The Truth Does Not Change According tour Ability to Stomach It, 6/3/24: “I hope you read this story and come away with a more nuanced understanding of how a community creates a permissive culture for extremism to thrive.”
Don’t Let Mistrust of Tech Companies Blind You to the Power of AI: It’s OK to be doubtful of tech leaders’ grandiose visions of our AI future—but that doesn’t mean the technology won’t have a huge impact, Steven Levy, Wired, 6/7/24: “AI will get more powerful. People will find ways to use it to make their jobs and personal lives easier. Also, many folks are going to lose their jobs, and entire companies will be disrupted.”
Hoarders, Scott Galloway, No Mercy/No Malice, 6/7/24: “Why wouldn’t we pursue real wealth — happiness, a sense of belonging, being part of something bigger than ourselves?”
‘We’re in 1938 now’: Putin’s war in Ukraine and lessons from history: Some analysts believe Kyiv is buying the west time on the precipice of a world war. Is it being used wisely? Patrick Wintour, The Guardian, 6/8/24: “…war is so remote from our societies that we have trouble grappling with what success requires.”
Outrage over ‘massacre’ in Gaza as Israel rescued four hostages: Top EU diplomat says ‘bloodbath must end’ after Israeli attacks killed at least 274, according to Gaza ministry, Emma Graham-Harrison, The Guardian, 6/9/24
Israeli peaceniks in the US didn’t find a home in the Gaza protests. So they started their own: Israeli leftists, who say opposition to the war is support for Israel, are rejected by pro-Palestinian and pro-war camps, Chris McGreal, The Guardian, 6/8/24: “There’s no place to have a conversation about the actual facts on the ground that takes into account the fact both Israelis and Palestinians are going to continue living between the river and the sea in some constellation, that nobody’s going anywhere. There’s 14m people there. We’re not going to ethnically cleanse half of them, no matter which half.”
The stone was my friend, I decided, and every morning,
I was a furious child dancing in the grass, the valves of my heart
opening to the truth like the gills of a fish in a cold, private river.
It was a Tuesday in America. Oh, I was lucky to be here.
—from “The Institution,” Aria Aber
Science, Environment
A meteorologist’s warning: Hurricanes are intensifying more quickly now: Miami meteorologist John Morales wants people to prepare for storms that get dangerous, fast, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 6/6/24
The end of the great northern forests? The tiny tree-killing beetle wreaking havoc on our ancient giants: Forests across Europe, the US and Canada have been hard hit by drought, fires and bark beetles. Now scientists fear the northern hemisphere’s greatest carbon sink is nearing a tipping point, Patrick Greenfield, The Guardian, 6/5/24
Drugs, microplastics and forever chemicals: new contaminants emerge in the Great Lakes: Scientists studying unregulated “emerging contaminants” say Ontario and the federal government need a co-ordinated plan to protect our water and health, Fatima Syed, Narwhal, 6/4/24: “‘We live in a chemical world’ that Canada’s laws aren’t designed to keep out of our water.”
U.N. chief calls for global fossil fuel ad ban: The New York Times, one of the biggest purveyors of fossil fuel ads, did not respond to our request for comment, Arielle Samuelson, Emily Atkin, Heated, 6/5/24
How a Trove of Whaling Logbooks Will Help Scientists Understand Our Changing Climate: Researchers are examining more than 4,200 New England documents to turn descriptions of the wind into data, Benjamin Cassidy, Smithsonian, 6/3/24: “They’re going to be able to reconstruct not just climate variability, but actual weather events and severe weather over the ocean back to the middle of the 18th century, way before instrumental data was broadly available.”
What dead flowers tell us about the future of life on Earth: Amid an extinction crisis, dried plant collections capture how the world is changing. But Duke University is planning to shut down its world-renowned herbarium, Dino Grandoni, Kate Medley, Washington Post, 6/8/24: “These sorts of dried plant specimens are one of the few ways to track the speed and scope of how humans are transforming the planet for plant life.”
Seals Help Scientists Make Discoveries in Antarctica’s Bellingshausen Sea: By analyzing hydrographic information gathered by seals and an undersea glider, researchers found new meltwater currents, as well as a new seafloor trough, Nathaniel Scharping, Eos, 6/4/24
‘Google for DNA’ indexes 10% of world’s known genetic sequences: Achievement demonstrates feasibility of making all of life’s code easily searchable, researchers say, Catherine Offord, Science, 6/5/24: “The resulting indexes, available for download and via a web portal, allow users to scan sequences comprising trillions of base pairs and billions of amino acids.”
Your Plastic-Free Kitchen: First steps in getting PFAS “forever chemicals” out of your diet, Larissa Zimberoff, Sierra, 6/3/24: “Embrace glass jars; replace your plastic cutting board; skip plastic bags at the supermarket - Get rid of hard-to-recycle items like plastic bags and films, pill bottles, and beyond by joining the Ridwell service, which gives its members a convenient metal container for your porch and picks up from your home every two weeks.” And many more ideas, great article!
Lawsuits Targeting Plastic Pollution Pile Up as Frustrated Citizens and States Seek Accountability: New litigation from state AG offices raises the stakes in court battles focused on fighting greenwashing and misleading claims about recycling, James Bruggers, Inside Climate News, 6/5/24
How to Eat Your Way to a Greener Planet: Poultry, beans and insects are environmentally friendly protein-rich options, Eric Niiler, Wall Street Journal, 6/5/24: “…if 10% of U.S. beef consumption were replaced by oysters, the reduction in greenhouse gases would be equivalent to having 10.8 million fewer cars on the road.”
Decade of the Battery, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 6/9/24: “EVs, ebikes, and drones only scratch the surface of the transformation of our physical world that light, small, cheap energy portability provides…. It took a long time for this general-purpose technology to arrive, but now it’s here, and the next decade (or, really three decades) will see it transform the world around us.”
Coming to grips with a climate paradox: Less air pollution spurs more wildfires: Getting rid of aerosols, such as sulfur dioxide, could let more sunlight reach boreal forests, helping turn them into tinderboxes. But the solution clearly isn’t more pollution, Warren Cornwall, Anthropocene, 6/5/24
A Natural-Gas Billionaire Bets on Greener Fossil Fuel: NET Power CEO Danny Rice says a new decarbonizing process could open the way for utilities to produce clean energy from natural gas, Benoît Morenne, Wall Street Journal, 6/6/24
Quieting the Global Growl: Underwater noise from ships has gotten louder, reshaping marine ecosystems and the lives of animals that depend on sounds to eat, mate, and navigate. Can ships ever pipe down? Amorina Kingdon, Hakai, 6/4/24
Defend the Best....and Fight for the Rest, Chris Jones, Swine Republic, 6/6/24: “…things will not get better without a fight—maybe that’s why many Iowa Democrats avoid the issue. But a fight it will be and many battles will be lost. And while Democrats can be accurately characterized as dumb and sometimes dishonest about this, Republican policy is downright sinister.”
Betrayal: It's not the Sunrise Movement, it is the governor of New York, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 6/6/24: “…it’s the most aggressively anti-environmental stand I can recall a major Democratic governor taking.”
Fog-thick morning—
I see only
where I now walk. I carry
my clarity
with me.
—from “Linnaeus in Lapland,” Lorine Niedecker
Health, Wellness
Lung Cancer Was a Death Sentence. Now Drugs Are Saving Lives. Pfizer, AstraZeneca treatments held the disease in check for months or years, Brianna Abbott, Wall Street Journal, 6/2/24 (No paywall)
The brain can store nearly 10 times more data than previously thought, study confirms: Scientists harnessed a new method to precisely measure the amount of information the brain can store, and it could help advance our understanding of learning, Emily Cooke, LiveScience, 6/4/24
There's a code within the symptom
A morbid sort of sign
The ominous reminder of the body's slow decline
As constant as a heartbeat
But stronger over time
While the rest of us decays
Listening to a sound that no one made
—from “Sound That No One Made / Doomscroller Sunrise,” Dawes, written by Taylor Goldsmith
Birds
New study reveals small birds have wings that evolve more rapidly than those of large birds, Abi Bautista, DVM360, 6/5/24: “The evolution of wing proportions is more tightly restricted in large birds, which operate under greater mechanical stresses.”
Bringing back a long extinct bird: Scientists sequence complete genome of bush moa, offering insights into its natural history, possible clues to evolution of flightless birds, Anne J. Manning, Harvard Gazette, 6/4/24: “Perhaps the most remarkable trait of these flightless birds is their complete absence of forelimb skeletal elements that typically comprise birds’ wings, the researchers wrote. Studying the moa genome could offer new clues into how and why some birds evolved to become flightless.”
Crane Migration at Rowe Sanctuary: Where People and Birds Intersect: An Audubon staffer reflects on her experience volunteering at Rowe Sanctuary during crane season—from seeing more than a half a million Sandhill Cranes to meeting the people who make the month-long celebration happen, Gabrielle Saleh, Audubon, 6/3/24
Searching for Wood Thrushes: "Little thrushes should be heard but not seen"?, Laura Erickson, For the Birds, 6/8/24: “They have one of the richest, most gorgeously complex of bird songs, but like other thrushes, they stay well concealed, avoiding our prying eyes.” 11 wood thrush songs
I forget what I wanted. Was it old music
laying gold-leaf on the evening?
lamplight sweetening the carpet
like honey from Crete: a dream of/door to Egypt?
Something to do with the life force.
—from “Housework,” Joan Larkin
I’ve received (justifiable) complaints from time to time when stories I link to are behind paywalls. That’s a problem related to a much bigger issue, which is how news media can survive in an online environment where so much information is free. I’ve tried to make as many links as possible to sites you are able to read, and now, just a reminder that all The Guardian links are always open, and because other outlets like The Atlantic, Washington Post, NY Times and Wall Street Journal give me a number of free shares, most of their articles are free to read as well. I hope this helps at least a bit.
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 from here—David