The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 101, April 17, 2022 (V2 #49)
What if the moon was essence of quinine
And high heels were a time of day
—Frank Stanford
“We have an existential obligation: to keep Ukraine from falling, and to make sure that Trump never again crosses the threshold of the White House so that our own country does not fall.”—Lucian K. Truscott IV
“Competition depends on rules, and rules depend on umpires. We should fight to protect competition — not winners. Because winners subvert the process. In the name of competition, they demand that their anticompetitive acts go unpunished. In the name of freedom, they insist on their right to shout down the dissenter’s voice. In the U.S., winners have funded “think tanks” and politicians, bought newspapers and cable news stations, and convinced us the umpire is our enemy.”—Scott Galloway
Environment and Science
If we can farm metal from plants, what else can we learn from life on Earth? There is so much intelligence on this planet other than ours. Realising that will be key to adapting to climate breakdown, James Bridle, The Guardian, 4/15/22
Solar panels that can generate electricity at night have been developed at Stanford, Rina Torchinky, NPR, 4/7/22
Documents Show How Polluting Industries Mobilized to Block Climate Action: Since its inception, the IPCC itself has been the target of corporate obstructionism, Amy Westerveldt, The Intercept, 4/12/22
Evidence of PFAS in organic pasta sauces: Testing finds fluorine—an indicator of PFAS—in four popular organic sauces. The good news? The other 51 brands tested showed no sign of "forever chemicals,” EHN Staff, Environmental Health News, 4/13/22
Microfossils may be evidence life began ‘very quickly’ after Earth formed: Scientists believe specimen shows life existed earlier than is widely assumed – increasing chances of life elsewhere, Linda Geddes, The Guardian, 4/13/22
Clovis debunked: America’s first settlers did not take the ice-free corridor: The "Clovis First" hypothesis for human settlement of North and South America has just been debunked. Where do we go from here? Tim Brinkhof, The Big Think, 4/11/22
The Changing Face of Parasitism: A 90-year record of fish parasites, unintentionally preserved in museum specimens, shows that while some species are booming, many are in decline. That’s not a good thing, Jack Tamisiea, Hakai, 4/11/22
Thawing permafrost is roiling the Arctic landscape, driven by a hidden world of changes beneath the surface as the climate warms, Mark J. Lara, The Conversation, 4/12/22
A Nebraska climate activist takes a trip down the Missouri River: Graham Jordison kayaked through seven states and past 10 coal plants, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 4/11/22
Deep Learning Poised to ‘Blow Up’ Famed Fluid Equations: For centuries, mathematicians have tried to prove that Euler’s fluid equations can produce nonsensical answers. A new approach to machine learning has researchers betting that “blowup” is near, Jordana Cepelewicz, Quanta, 4/12/22
Seed banks: the last line of defense against a threatening global food crisis: As climate breakdown and worldwide conflict continue to place the food system at risk, seed banks from the Arctic to Lebanon try to safeguard biodiversity, Salomé Gómez-Upegui, Rita Liu, The Guardian, 4/15/22 (Ed. Note, a few years ago I published Seeds on Ice, the incredible story of the Svalbard seed bank by its founder).
How Madison, Wisconsin, is making itself more resilient to climate change through renewable energy, green infrastructure, and job training, Erica Sweeney, Business Insider, 4/14/22
Inside Clean Energy: The Idea of Energy Efficiency Needs to Be Reinvented: Incremental gains are no longer good enough if the goal is to get carbon dioxide emissions to zero, a researcher argues, Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News, 4/14/22: “you could simply make the switch to fully electric.”
A Farmer’s Quest to Beat California’s Waves of Drought and Deluge: Don Cameron went all in on a trickle-down survival tactic. It could help save America’s agricultural heartland—even if he doesn’t survive the new water war, Susie Cagle, Wired, 4/12/22
Can the US Go Green Without Destroying Sacred Native Lands? An Apache group is fighting to stop a massive copper mine in Arizona, Maddie Oatman, Mother Jones May/June, 2022
Across the Boreal Forest, Scientists Are Tracking Warming’s Toll: Researchers are studying dramatic changes in the vast northern forests: thawing permafrost, drowned trees, methane releases, increased wildfires, and the slow transformation from carbon sinks to carbon emitters, Ed Struzik, Inside Climate News, 4/11/22
Scientists are tracking the link between pollution, climate change, and rising mercury levels in fish, Zoe Read, WHYY, 4/11/22
Powell’s looming power problem: Drought and demand threaten a critical component of the Western grid, Jonathan Thompson, High Country News, 4/11/22
From traditional practice to top climate solution, agroecology gets growing attention, Anna Lappe, MongaBay, 4/13/22: “Based on traditional knowledge, agroecology can solve multiple challenges at once, including the biodiversity crisis and food insecurity.”
To fight climate despair, this Christian ecologist says science isn’t enough: Rick Lindroth is among a small but growing number who argue faith is important to combatting hopelessness. Getting ‘re-enchanted with the Earth,’ he says, is the key, Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Washington Post, 4/16/22
History Repeats and Curves and then It Kills Us
Reading war news, the daily reminders of those in the war who are also reading war news, worrying about their relatives: Alive or dead?
And my American forebears also reading war news in 1939, worrying about relatives in Lithuania, Poland, Galicia, Ukraine: Alive or dead. What happened to my great, great grandfather, the Jewish lumberman in Tilsit? And my great grandfather's half-brothers, and their children? Alive or dead?
Cousins throughout the Pale who stayed in their shtetls instead of migrating to America and South Africa and Australia: Alive or dead? I dream their Yiddish mysteries, our shared history of blood and death. Russia’s dark golem trample this beautiful world in anger and fear and desperation. Alive and dead. The darkness rises.
—David Wilk
Politicking
Read of the Week: The Slime Machine Targeting Dozens of Biden Nominees: In an escalation of partisan warfare, a little-known dark-money group is trying to thwart the President’s entire slate, Jane Mayer, New Yorker, 4/16/22
Where’s the Fraud? Marc Elias, Democracy Docket, 4/13/22: “…after months of hearing Republicans cry fraud in parking lots, in legislative chambers and on Fox News, judges are now asking, “where’s the fraud?””
How the Koch Machine Works, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 4/13/22: “Popular Information's reporting on Charles Koch was attacked by many other entities and nearly all receive Koch funding.”
Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid: It’s not just a phase, Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic, 4/11/22
Democrats need to run on the war: Their economic agenda has been stymied, so they should trumpet their strength on foreign affairs, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 4/11/22
Work remote, get paid less? The battle dividing offices will define the future of work, Julie Hobsbawm, The Guardian, 4/12/22
Three Cultural Shifts You Can’t Afford to Miss, Shama Hyder, Linked In, 4/11/22: “The world is changing more rapidly than you realize. These shifts are going to have a colossal impact on the world of business and communication.”
Turns Out Biden’s Climate Change Policies are Actually Incredibly Popular! A.J. Dellinger, Mic.com, 4/11/22
The big payback, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 4/12/22: “Kushner has pulled off one of the most brazenly corrupt — and successful — schemes in US history.”
How Joe Manchin Knifed the Democrats — and Bailed on Saving Democracy: Joe Biden promised to fix voting rights. The senator from West Virginia had other ideas, Andy Kroll, Rolling Stone, 4/10/22
After Coming Out as Trans, a Disney Heir Is Slamming Don’t Say Gay Bills: “I didn’t see myself reflected in anyone, and that made me feel like there was something wrong with me,” James Factora, Them, 4/12/22
How Indigenous Societies Fought to Preserve Their Blended Gender Identities in the Face of Colonialism: Anticolonialism and Resistance to Binaries, Gregory D. Smithers, LitHub, 4/12/22
Jackie Robinson was a Republican until the GOP became the ‘white man’s party,’ Chris Lamb, The Conversation, 4/15/22: “We older blacks, unfortunately were willing to wait. Today’s young blacks are ready to explode.”
Psychological tips aren’t enough – policies need to address structural inequities so everyone can flourish, Sarah S. Willen, Abigail Fisher Williamson, Colleen Walsh, The Conversation, 4/11/22
I Worry We’ll Soon Forget About Ukraine: Americans need to cure what ails our democracy, ridding ourselves of our incipient Russification, George Packer, The Atlantic, 4/10/22
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure.
—from “Musée des Beaux Arts,” W.H. Auden
Books, Art, Culture
How a Mundane Anthropologist and Bureaucrat Helped Contribute to American Settler Colonialism: Spending Time With History's Malevolent Minor Characters, Alicia Puglionesi, LitHub, 4/14/22 (from her new book, In Whose Ruins: Power, Possession, and the Landscapes of American Empire )
Your personality can protect or age your brain, study finds, Sandee LaMotte, CNN, 4/11/22: “Being more conscientious and extroverted keeps mild cognitive impairment at bay longer, while having higher levels of neuroticism increases the chances of cognitive decline…”
When Your “Public Square” is a Private Company, Any Sulky Billionaire Can Buy It: Elon Musk and the False Promises of Social Media, Andrew Keen, LitHub, 4/15/22 (Ed. Note: Freedom of the press belongs to whomever owns the press.)
A CT mechanic found hundreds of pieces of art in a dumpster. They’re worth 'millions,’ Adriana Morga, CT Insider, 4/8/22, (Ed. Note: Who cares what they’re worth? The art is outstanding.)
Learning from the Work Muriel Rukeyser Left Unfinished: Suppressed Literary Histories, Rowena Kennedy-Epstein, LitHub, 4/14/22: “Rukeyser’s writing often asks us to look beyond what is most easily visible in our culture and documents what has been suppressed in service of power.”
I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
—Muriel Rukeyser, from “Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)”
Passover reminds us that freedom is hard — and that’s okay: The holiday celebrates the struggles and the joys alike of liberation, Liel Leibovitz, Mark Oppenheimer, Washington Post, 4/14/22
How a coffee company and a marketing maven brewed up a Passover tradition: A brief history of the Maxwell House Haggadah, Kerri Steinberg, The Conversation, 4/13/22
In Liana Finck's world — or, maybe just in her new book — God is a woman, Scott Simon, NPR, 4/16/22: “She wasn't crying anymore. She no longer wanted to destroy the world. Then she remembered her friends and blew the standing waters away.” Let There Be Light by Liana Finck.
The 26-Year-Old Dropout Lapping the Hedge-Fund Field, Fund manager, startup founder, blogger: Eva Shang is cracking the private debt market. The $400 million she raised in six months says Wall Street is taking notice, Matt Wirz, Wall Street Journal, 4/16/22. “Eva Shang … uses artificial intelligence to invest in private debt, a hot market populated mostly by men with Wall Street pedigrees.”
Warming Trends: British Morning Show Copies Fictional ‘Don’t Look Up’ Newscast, Pinterest Drops Climate Misinformation and Greta’s Latest Book Project: A column highlighting climate-related studies, innovations, books, cultural events and other developments from the global warming frontier, Katelyn Weisbrod, Inside Climate News, 4/16/22
If I can put each thing into its place, there will be
a place for the boat to land where the clock
doesn’t tick, where the body is unlocked from pain,
where the wood thrush sings again after the rain.
—from “Getting Through the Night,” Minnie Bruce Pratt, in The Best American Poetry
All the Birdies
Back from the dead? Elusive ivory-bill woodpecker not extinct, researchers say: An expedition to the forests of Louisiana say extinction of bird, last definitively seen in 1944, has been exaggerated, Oliver Milman, The Guardian, 4/13/22
Kansas biologists are poisoning trees to save birds and butterflies, Celia Llopis-Jepsen, HHPR, 4/14/22
How a mound-building bird shapes its Australian ecosystem: The malleefowl has a potentially important role redistributing nutrients across the landscape, Jake Buehler, Science News, 4/11/22
Common swifts enter hibernation-like torpor on cold nights, Christa Lesté-Lasserre, New Scientist, 4/12/22: “A migratory bird that almost never stops flying sometimes slips into a brief, hibernation-like state inside its nest during chilly breeding periods.”
‘The lunacy is getting more intense’: how Birds Aren’t Real took on the conspiracy theorists: On a march, Peter McIndoe held up a sign and talked about how the ‘deep state’ had replaced all birds with drones. It was meant as a small act of satire but has become a mass movement, Zoe Williams, The Guardian, 4/14/22: “It’s a conspiracy-within-a-conspiracy, a little aneurysm of reality and mockery in the bloodstream of the mad pizzagate-style theories that animate the ‘alt-right.’”
The latest Writerscast interview, just posted, is with Sarah Vogel about her exceptional book, The Farmer’s Lawyer, the story of her years-long class-action fight against the Federal government to save family farmers during the Reagan administration. A book I highly recommend reading. Do let me know what you are reading, I am always looking for new books, new writers, even though it seems there is never enough time to read them.
There can be freedom only when nobody owns it
Of what use is the moon if you don’t have the night?
Of what use is the windmill with no Quixote left who’ll fight?
Jackson Browne singing “Walls and Doors” by Carlos Varela (trans. by Jackson Browne)
We need more doors and fewer walls. And we’re coming ever closer to when it will be up to each of us to hold the door open to let in the light - and more. Love to all - David
