The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 228, September 22, 2024 (V5 #20)
For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.—Benjamin Franklin
The goal of advertising is to rip a hole in your heart so it can then fill that hole with plastic, or with any other materials that can be yanked out of the earth and, after brief sojourns as objects of desire, be converted to waste.—Kenneth A. Gould
The absence of love brought many tragedies that might have been averted. Instead of the golden rain of love, a black cloak of indifference fell upon the people. And so people have lost the eyes of love and can no longer see clearly…Here are the origins of the disintegration of all values and the destruction and sterilization of conscience: It is a long chain that is anchored at the devil’s feet.—Alberto Lattuado
Books, Art, Music, Culture
JD Souther, Hit Songwriter for the Eagles & Linda Ronstadt, Dead at 78: The artist-songwriter was also known as an actor with roles in Nashville, Thirtysomething, Postcards From the Edge and more, Jessica Nicholson, Billboard, 9/18/24
Books Have No Gender: On Being a Small Town Librarian While Raising a Trans Child: “This town felt so conservative, its social norms so crushing. I needed someone who would help me swim against them,” Abi Maxwell, LitHub, 9/17/24: “We both knew what we were really discussing—my child, known to the world as a boy, who put the princess dress on every time she visited.” Book: One Day I’ll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman: A Mother’s Story
How Greenwich Village’s Iconic, Iconoclastic Music Scene Came to Be: on Max Gordon, Prohibition, and the Transformative Creation of the Village Vanguard, David Browne, LitHub, 9/18/24: “ In basements or coffeehouses that barely held fifty people, that era was a veritable hot house of musicians who invented the super-personal singer-songwriter mode, pushed jazz to previously unimagined limits, and injected topical songs into the mainstream.” Book: Talkin’ Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America’s Bohemian Music Capital
‘Fame is like going through puberty’: Chappell Roan on sexuality, superstardom and the joy of drag: She’s gone from obscurity to the A-list, but not without struggle: On the road in the UK, the singer talks teenage angst, her queer inspirations ... and why she hasn’t endorsed Kamala Harris, Kate Solomon, The Guardian, 9/21/24: “She’s gone from cult figure to icon in less time than it takes to grow out a fringe – and she has been candid about how hard the experience has been.”
Tender, yet creepy: Dolls help children create wonderfully vivid and imaginative worlds, while also serving as unsettling reminders of the abyss, Tishani Doshi, Aeon, 9/16/24: “I find myself clinging to childhood artefacts – each doll, each minuscule plastic shoe a ladder into memory.”
Are We Now Living in a Parasite Culture? In the new consumer economy, you get consumed, Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker, 9/17/24: “…the Forbes list of billionaires is filled with individuals who got rich via parasitical business strategies—creating almost nothing, but gorging themselves on the creativity of others.”
Is Culture Dying? The French sociologist Olivier Roy believes that “deculturation” is sweeping the world, with troubling consequences, Joshua Rothman, New Yorker, 9/17/24: “Culture used to be something we did for its own sake; now we do it to position ourselves vis-à-vis other people. For Roy, this means that it’s dying.”
When the world is ready to fall on your little shoulders
And when you're feeling lonely and small
You need somebody there to hold you
So don't you ever be ashamed, when you're only lonely
Ah, you can call out my name... when you're only lonely
—from “You’re Only Lonely,” JD Souther
Politics, Technology
There’s a danger that the US supreme court, not voters, picks the next president: Millions of Americans will vote this fall – but six Republican justices might have the final say, in a Bush v Gore redux, David Daley, The Guardian, 9/17/24: “There are dozens of scenarios where Trump’s endgame not only pushes a contested election into the courts, but ensures that it ends up before one court in particular: a US supreme court packed with a conservative supermajority that includes three lawyers who cut their teeth working on Bush v Gore, one whose wife colluded with Stop the Steal activists to overturn the 2020 results, and another whose spouse flew the insurrectionist flag outside their home.”
How Republicans Are Waging an All-Out Assault on the Election System: “The Whole Thing Can Fall Apart:” Voting rights advocates warn that Donald Trump and his allies have drastically “scaled up” their election-denial efforts, from lawsuits to rule changes to state board takeovers. “The antidemocracy movement is constantly shape-shifting,” says one expert, Eric Lutz, Vanity Fair, 9/19/24
Nebraska may change its electoral system at the last second to help Trump win: The state’s Republican governor has proposed a legal change that could alter the course of the national presidential election, Stephen Marche, The Guardian, 9/19/24: “If Nebraska changes its system to give Trump an advantage, Maine has said it will reciprocate in order to cancel out any attempt to shift the balance of power.”
Saginaw: the swing county in the swing state that could decide the election: Voters picked Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Winning Saginaw is key to securing Michigan – and the White House, Chris McGreal, The Guardian, 9/21/24
Fantasy-Impotence-Fascism: The Trump-Vance Political Theory, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 9/22/24: “…the government becomes more impotent, leaving space for the oligarchs and generating more reasons for Americans to fight one another.”
What The News Needs Is More History: How do we make sense of the present? By comparing it to the past. No past, no comparison, no making sense, Dan Gardner, PastPresentFuture, 9/22/24: “…the news is inherently biased in favour of the negative and against the positive, and therefore provides a consistently distorted picture of reality.”
A Civil War in America? Two Experts Sound the Alarm on Trump's Second Term: ‘Authoritarians specialize in doing the unthinkable,’ and people are misguided if they think it cannot happen in the US, Mehdi Hassan, Zeteo, 9/19/24: “…This is what demagogues do, they have to condition people to see violence differently.”
How John Roberts Went Full MAGA: A revealing article in The New York Times details how the chief justice put his thumb on the scale for Trump to keep him on the ballot and out of jail, Elie Mystal, The Nation, 9/17/24: “Roberts had a chance to build consensus decisions by striking a moderate tone with the liberal justices, but instead opted for hard-line MAGA positions that gave Trump everything he wanted.”
Afraid to Seek Care Amid Georgia’s Abortion Ban, She Stayed at Home and Died: Candi Miller’s family said she didn't visit a doctor “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions.” Maternal health experts deemed her death preventable and blamed Georgia’s abortion ban, Kavitha Surana, ProPublica, 9/18/24
US still unprepared for Russian election interference, Robert Mueller says: Former special counsel issues warning in preface to book about 2016 investigation and Trump-Moscow links, Martin Pengelly, The Guardian, 9/18/24: “This threat deserves the attention of every American. Russia attacked us before and will do so again.” Book: Interference: The Inside Story of Trump, Russia, and the Mueller Investigation
How the Far-Right Uses Educational Takeover to Impose Its Agenda: on the Ongoing Fight Against Creeping Fascism in American Schools, Jason Stanley, LitHub, 9/16/24: “The ultimate goal is to justify a takeover of the institutions, transforming them into weapons in the war against the very idea of multi-racial democracy.”
The Haitian Question: The history of Haitian immigration to the United States is that of politicians on both sides of the aisle fighting to keep Haitians out of the country, with equal cruelty, Roxane Gay, New Yorker, 9/17/24: “Republicans soften the ground by making outlandish or incendiary claims. They do it over and over until their narrative breaches the perimeter of their little enclaves and bleeds into the mainstream. The bad actors keep repeating these statements. We hear them so frequently that they become part of our vernacular. We capitulate and treat the discursive dominance of the extreme right as an inevitability that we cannot resist, even though we absolutely can.”
How will you save small midwestern towns without mass immigration? What really happens when a "flood of migrants" gets "dumped" on a small heartland town, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 9/22/24: “If you think immigrants get “dumped” on small midwestern towns, you probably need to adjust your mental image. It’s not the government causing a bunch of Somalis to move to Lewiston or a bunch of Haitians to move to Springfield — it’s simply America’s freedom of movement and free enterprise at work.”
The U.S. Steel sale, explained, Isaac Saul, Tangle, 9/17/24: “Steel will always be the industry that built Pittsburgh, and this deal is its best shot to stay afloat. But it doesn’t have to be the industry that builds the future. In fact, it won’t be. It already isn’t. Once you accept that reality, it’s easier to accept the deal.”
America’s dairy farms are disappearing, down 95% since the 1970s − milk price rules are one reason why, Elizabeth Eckelkamp, The Conversation, 9/16/24: “Costs exceed average dairy's profit in most dairy states. In most dairy-producing states, average dairy farm costs, such as for feed, labor and insurance, have been higher than sales.”
A new government report reveals the fundamental flaw in the American economy, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 9/18/24: “…the average family in the bottom 90% earned just $3,100 of capital income in 2021, the average member of the top 1% received $1.6 million…. As the economy grows, most of the benefits accrue not to people that are working, but to people that happen to already have money.”
FTC Study Finds ‘Vast Surveillance’ of Social Media Users, Brad Pareso, Adweek, 9/20/24: “The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that it found that several social media and streaming services engaged in “vast surveillance” of consumers, including minors, collecting and sharing more personal information than most users realized.”
Abortion and Reproductive Rights Are Economic Issues, Laura Tyson, Project Syndicate, 9/20/24: “In the US states with the strictest abortion restrictions, children are more likely to be poor, to drop out of school, and to die young, and lack of access to contraception means that babies are more likely to be born to unmarried mothers. In the United States and elsewhere, reproductive freedom is a cornerstone of economic prosperity.”
We Know What Hate Can Do. It's Time to Invest in Love: Reflections occasioned by my new Los Angeles Times op-ed on love's political role in fraught times, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, 9/21/24: “Love insists that we are precious beings who deserve leaders who respect us and promote our well-being, not tyrants who deceive, rob, jail and kill us. Love supports resistance in places where freedom has been lost, and it can also help endangered democracies like our own to reverse course.”
Meanwhile, have you used your mind today?
What pomegranate raised you from the dead,
Springing, full-grown, from your own head, Athena?
—from “Pro Femina,” Carolyn Kizer
Science, Environment
Scientists have captured Earth’s climate over the last 485 million years. Here’s the surprising place we stand now: An effort to understand Earth’s past climates uncovered a history of wild temperature shifts and offered a warning on the consequences of human-caused warming, Sarah Kaplan, Simon Ducroquet, Washington Post, 9/19/24 (No Paywall)
The Big Big Big Big Big Picture: A big new study zeroes in on our dilemma, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 9/20/24: “We need to stand in awe for a moment before the scope of earth’s long history. And then we need to get the hell to work.”
Biden’s green policies will save 200,000 lives and have boosted clean energy jobs, data shows: Two separate reports find policies will save Americans from pollution in coming decades and added nearly 150,000 jobs, Oliver Milman, The Guardian, 9/17/24
How Colorado Cowboys and Conservationists Joined Forces to Stop Drilling: The members of a self-described ragtag group had little in common, but their campaign could serve as model for future environmental efforts, Zoe Rom, NY Times, 9/18/24 “This campaign has done an extraordinary amount of good to right-size the value of public lands, the value of environmental values like historic cultural values on public lands that weren’t getting adequate consideration in the old paradigm.” (No Paywall)
Can we eat our way out of the climate crisis? Curbing the carbon footprint of what we eat won’t require an agricultural revolution. It's already happening in farms and ranches across the country, Ayurella Horn-Muller, Grist, 9/17/24: “By analyzing the emissions released when food is grown, produced, harvested, and shipped, The Blue Plate makes the case that curbing the carbon footprint of what we eat won’t require an agricultural revolution.”
A Corn Desert with only ethanol to drink, Chris Jones, Swine Republic, 9/21/24: “We need onerous tax and conservation policy that forces crop landlords sitting in offices in Minneapolis, Des Moines, and Chicago to divest, making land available for people that want to work it sustainably.”
Fortress Conservation: Can a Congo Tribe Return to Its Forest? An African Union ruling finds that parts of a Congo national park should be returned to the Batwa people, who were evicted decades ago. Advocates say the ruling must be implemented and that the Batwa will need support to protect the park’s rare gorillas and other wildlife, Fred Pearce, Yale Environment 360, 9/17/24
What does the decline of insect-eating bats have to do with infant mortality? More than you think: New research finds strong links between the arrival of white-nose syndrome, increased insecticide use, and higher infant mortality, Warren Cornwall, Anthropocene, 9/18/24: “In counties where bat infections were confirmed, insecticide use rose by 31%.... There was no similar change in nearby counties with no known cases of white-nose syndrome….At the same time, counties hit by bat die-offs also witnessed an 8% increase in infant mortality….Counties without white-nose saw no similar increase.”
The mayflies are sending us a warning about urban wildfires: What happens to tiny organisms in streams affected by wildfires has meaning for humans, as well, Lauren Magliozzi, Washington Post, 9/16/24: “…toxic metals from the urban fire debris are hurting sensitive organisms such as mayflies.”
Worst drought on record lowers Amazon rivers to all-time lows, Jorge Silva, Leonardo Benassatto, Reuters, 9/18/24: “The second-consecutive year of critical drought has parched much of Brazil's vegetation and caused wildfires across South American nations, cloaking cities in clouds of smoke.”
California Can Slake the Thirst of Its Farms by Storing Water Underground: A new study finds that the state should replenish groundwater aquifers to sustain agriculture, Caroline Marshall Reinhart, Wired, 9/21/24
Close Encounters of Animal Kind: On the Porous Urban Boundaries Between Predator and Prey: Our Complex Relationships With the Wild Creatures That Share Our Urban Space, Christopher Brown, LitHub, 9/18/24: “…it is still possible in this world for you to be some other animal’s food.”
Cells Across the Tree of Life Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA: Long known as a messenger within cells, RNA is increasingly seen as life’s molecular communication system — even between organisms widely separated by evolution, Annie Melchor, Quanta, 9/16/24: “How can RNA from one branch of the tree of life be understood by organisms on another? It’s a common language…”
From Sandstone Basin to Stonehenge Altar: New research unearths the Scottish origin of Stonehenge’s Altar Stone and its 750-kilometer journey to Salisbury Plain, Rebecca Owen, Eos, 9/16/24: “…the Altar Stone…originated 750 kilometers (470 miles) away in Scotland’s Orcadian Basin. The finding implies that ancient British civilizations were much more connected by culture—and geology—than previously known.”
We swung from the magnolia,
our great leaves fell, it remained
our friend. Each day was that same
sweet holiday that never ended
until the windows got soft. It was summer.
Candles came on like televisions.
That was the last time things were real.
—from “It Was Summer. The Wind Blew,” Matthew Zapruder
Health, Wellness
Scientists mapped what pregnancy really does to a mom’s brain: The research shows how pregnancy remodels the brain in unprecedented detail and opens a new window into matrescence -- the transition to becoming a mother, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Washington Post, 9/16/24: “Despite these massive changes that occur during pregnancy, we have a largely poor understanding of exactly what changes occur in the brain during this time.”
Scientists Crack a 50-Year Mystery to Discover a New Set of Blood Groups: We now know why some blood is missing a key antigen—leading to the creation of a new blood-grouping system. Experts believe even more discoveries are on the way, Chris Baraniuk, Wired, 9/16/24
Scientists just figured out how many chemicals enter our bodies from food packaging: A new study details the chemicals finding their way into human bodies from contact with food, Shannon Osaka, Washington Post, 9/16/24: “…of the roughly 14,000 known chemicals in food packaging, 3,601 — or about 25 percent — have been found in the human body, whether in samples of blood, hair or breast milk.”
Exposure to microplastics may contribute to liver disease and other metabolic disorders, Katherine McMahon, Sarah Howard, Environmental Health News, 9/20/24
US health system ranks last compared with peer nations, report finds: Despite Americans paying nearly double that of other nations, the US fares poorly in list of 10 countries, Jessica Glenza, The Guardian, 9/19/24
Birds, Birding
Stark before and after photographs reveal sharp decline of Norway’s seabirds: When Rob Barrett set out to survey one of the country’s largest colonies in the 1970s there were too many birds to count. Now, his pictures and archive images show a species decline echoed around the world, Rebekah White, The Guardian, 9/17/24
These birds are almost extinct: A radical idea could save them, Dino Grandoni, Matt McClain, Washington Post, 9/15/24: “As climate change and other threats destroy the habitats of living things, biologists are beginning to think of doing the once unthinkable: finding new homes for species outside their native ranges.”
I saw myself
I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it
and vowed
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through
and then heard
"ring of bone" where
ring is what a
bell does
Lew Welch
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Please continue to keep in touch. Send messages and your own news. Hearing from you makes this all worthwhile. Stay well; share love; work for good. We need each other, now more than ever. I know we can do this.
Love is always the place where I begin and end.—bell hooks
Love always—David