The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 258, April 20, 2025 (V5 #50)
I can be free only to the extent that others are forbidden to profit from their physical, economic, or other superiority to the detriment of my liberty.—Emile Durkheim
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.—Benjamin Franklin
History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.—Seamus Heaney
Books, Music, Art, Culture
On the Enduring Power of Charles Reznikoff’s Holocaust, 50 Years Later: “The scenes of Holocaust unfold in Eastern Europe, but Reznikoff seems to suggest they could happen anywhere...,” Nick Ripatrazone, LitHub, 4/18/25: “Was it possible, then, that the central event of Jewish history in almost two thousand years defied the imagination and had best be surrounded by silence?”...The scenes of Holocaust unfold in Eastern Europe, but Reznikoff seems to suggest they could happen anywhere, at any time…”
The Raw Honey and Cyanide of Anne Sexton, on an Underestimated Writer, Gloria Horton-Young, Republic of Letters, 4/19/25: “They called it confessional like you were some housewife whispering sins to a priest with yellow teeth, begging for absolution. As if you weren’t taking that pen and slicing open the belly of language to see what spilled out.”
Love your flesh. Hold it in your hands.
Touch it as though you were blind.
—from “The Touch,” Anne Sexton
After Forty Years, Phish Isn’t Seeking Resolution: People who love Phish do so with a quasi-religious devotion. People who dislike Phish do so with an equal fervor, Amanda Petrusich, New Yorker, 4/14/25: “Phish requires commitment—a subversive idea in our moment of minuscule attention spans.”
For Trans People and Those Who Love Us, Charlotte Clymer, Web Thoughts, 4/17/25: “If you are trans or non-binary, you are part of a great and proud lineage, stretching all around the globe, all the way back to antiquity.”
‘His delivery cut through class barriers’: Moby, Mala and other musicians on working with Benjamin Zephaniah, Anu Shukla, The Guardian, 4/15/25: “Emerging from the dub poetry scene, Zephaniah channelled personal experiences of systemic racism and state violence into intelligent spoken word.” “Where is Your Pride” Moby, ft. Benjamin Zephaniah
How the Cherokee Nation Used Diplomacy to Resist Subordination: Native American Strategies of Self-Preservation in Colonial North America, David Narrett, LitHub, 4/17/25: “The Indigenous tenaciously guarded independence and resisted subordination—and for this very reason often sought powerful allies within frameworks of respect and reciprocity.” Book: The Cherokees: In War and at Peace, 1670-1840
The Price of Eggs: Or, death of a chicken, Christopher Solomon, Orion, 4/16/25: “To care for even a few acres is to have the power to decide what lives and what dies. I did not ask for this role, but it is there nonetheless, written in invisible ink on the mortgage papers.”
Meet MAGA’s Favorite Communist: Conservative activists like Christopher Rufo are taking inspiration from Antonio Gramsci, the 20th-century Marxist thinker who drew up a battle plan for winning culture wars, Kevin T. Dugan, Wall Street Journal, 4/17/25: “The right’s struggle against what it sees as left-wing cultural hegemony has become increasingly central to President Trump’s education policy.”
Player One and Main Character: Gideon Jacobs considers what Donald Trump and Elon Musk, as odd couple in chief, have in common, Gideon Jacobs, LA Review of Books, 4/18/25: “Where Musk’s and Trump’s fateful journeys in fiction met was inside Twitter, a grand, dynamic arena of user-generated storytelling, a proto-virtual reality written one 140-character-long fan fiction at a time.”
An old man carrying pieces of wood to burn
from a house that had been torn down:
there had been no order against this—
and it was cold.
An S.S. commander saw him
and asked where he had taken the wood,
and the old man answered from a house that had been torn down.
But the commander drew his pistol,
put it against the old man’s throat
and shot him.
—from “Holocaust,” Charles Reznikoff
Politics, Economics, Technology
When Hope and History Rhyme, Rebecca Solnit, Meditations in an Emergency, 4/18/25: “It comes from us when we find ourselves, our values, our courage say no more to the crimes and harm, it comes from us when we come together as civil society, it comes from us when like the countless droplets of a wave we wash over government and institutional power to show that greater power that can start it all over again.”
An extraordinary opinion for the current crisis: And for the ages, Harry Litman, Talking Feds, 4/18/25: “Considering everything—where we are as a democracy, the stakes of the Abrego-Garcia case in particular, the truculent posture of the Administration,—the opinion is fairly magnificent.” READ THE COMPLETE OPINION!
Conservative NYT Columnist David Brooks Calls for ‘National Civic Uprising’ to Defeat Trumpism – Complete With ‘Mass Rallies, Strikes,’ Michael Luciano, Mediaite, 4/17/25
We’re Now On The Fast Track To A Historic Constitutional Clash, David Kurtz, Talking Points Memo, 4/17/25: “It now looks like potential contempt proceedings in the Alien Enemies Act case and the Abrego Garcia case will be running in parallel, leapfrogging each other from time to time for the right to be the Supreme Court’s biggest test so far of the Trump II presidency.”
To Democrats In Office: America Is In Grave Danger. Fight like It! Give up on the idea that this will be easy or that there is a simple solution. It is the cumulative weight and fury of outrage that turns the tide, Stuart Stevens, Lincoln Square, 4/16/25
Why Dems Shouldn't Be Afraid to Fight for Kilmar Abrego Garcia: Believe it or not, public opinion is on our side -- if we make the case aggressively, Dan Pfeiffer, Message Box, 4/16/25
To My Apolitical Friends, It's Time You Got Political, John Pavlovitz, Beautiful Mess, 4/16/25: “Remaining quiet in turbulent times is a luxury that perceived privilege and intellectual ignorance afford. That passivity is born out of the illusion of safety. (Trust me, none of us is safe.)”
Heard the resistance was dead? You’ve been reading too much: The zone might be flooded, but an anti-Trump protest movement is well underway, Erik Wemple, Washington Post, 4/18/25
Bernie and AOC Are Starting a New Political Movement Before Our Eyes: Forget the era of “Bernie Bros.” Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew a record crowd in Los Angeles with a new message aimed squarely at Donald Trump and Elon Musk, Alex Thomas, New Republic, 4/14/25
By Weaponizing Arrest Records and Suspending Due Process, the Trump Administration Has Targeted Over 1,000 Foreign Students: Facing sweeping deportation threats, international students and recent graduates—who have had their visas revoked or status terminated—speak out about living in fear and confusion, Meghnad Bose, Drop Site News, 4/19/25
State Terror: A brief guide for Americans, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 4/15/25: “When the state carries out criminal terror against its own people, it calls them the “criminals” or the the “terrorists.” During the 1930s, this was the normal practice.”
Birthright Citizenship and DOJ’s Misuse of History in Its Appellate Briefs, John Mikhail, Just Security, 4/18/25: “… DOJ is grasping at straws.”
We’re About to Find Out What Mass Deportation Really Looks Like: The Trump administration’s campaign to remove millions of people from the United States could soon be supercharged by Congress, Nick Miroff, Atlantic, 4/16/25: “Republican lawmakers are now preparing to lavish ICE with a colossal funding increase…”
Untangling The Deportation Cases, Joyce Vance, Civil Discourse, 4/19/25: “Trump is trying to break the government. To control all its levers, he needs a complicit judiciary to go along with a complacent Congress.”
The Next Person in a Cell With No Charges Could Be You: We are now in the midst of a outright coup against the Constitution, against the United States, and against our founding ideals. If we don't fight for and win the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, our democracy is dead, Thom Hartmann, Portside, 4/15/25
From “Deportation” to Abduction: How the media and consultant class’s poll-washing enabled the abduction of Kilmar Abrego Garcia—and what comes next, Michael Podhorzer, Weekend Reading, 4/17/25
The Bleeding Constitution, Mike Brock, Notes from the Circus, 4/19/25: “We've entered the territory where the administration's strategy appears to be: delay, appeal, ignore, and repeat—until the very concept of judicial review becomes meaningless in practice.”
The Declaration of Independence's warning for Trump: “The king violated their rights time and time again, and he basically ‘un-kinged’ himself,” Aaron Rupar, Thor Benson, Public Notice, 4/18/25: “The Declaration has to do with fundamental rights being denied.”
The Only Consistent Thread of Trumpism: This administration embodies a new type of conservatism centered on the impulse to destroy, Damon Linker, Persuasion, 4/18/25
How venture capital broke America: on what went wrong in Silicon Valley and how to rebuild after the broligarchs burn it all down, Catherine Bracy, The Ink, 4/17/25: The problem is in how technology is funded, and how a subset of venture capital firms…turned the funding of startups …into behemoths with the money and power to dismantle American institutions and reshape the economy and the country in their image.” Book: World Eaters
The Surrender to China: How America Is Sleepwalking Into Financial Collapse, Mike Brock, Notes from the Circus, 4/14/25: “The Chinese Communist Party couldn't have designed a more effective strategy for American collapse if they had installed it themselves.”
The Meltdown of the United States, Melvin Goodman, CounterPunch, 4/17/25: “The whole world has decided that the U.S. government has no idea what it’s doing.”
Ed Martin Has Completely Disqualified Himself: Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney is a Russian-state-TV darling, Tom Nichols, Atlantic, 4/17/25: “Martin’s willingness to become a regular commenter on Russian television is a significant warning sign...”
Trumpism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism? David Schultz, CounterPunch, 4/16/25: “Or is this simply a simplistic revanchism to return the US to a global economic position that simply does not exist anymore?”
Truth Social launches scheme to profit from Trump's tariff policies: A jaw-dropping conflict of interest, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 4/16/25: “Why is it getting into the business of selling thematic investment accounts? It is failing as a social media company.”
Worst-case scenarios and endgames for the Trump economy: And why Trump's attack on the Fed makes them more likely, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 4/19/25: “Trump and his administration have proven to be extraordinarily foolish, to a degree even his wild campaign promises failed to prepare us for….at some point Trump will drive right off a macroeconomic cliff. Unfortunately, he would be driving the rest of us with him.”
Federal education cuts and Trump DEI demands leave states, teachers in limbo: Many conservative-led states rely heavily on dollars from Washington, Robbie Sequeira, Stateline, 4/16/25
Federal budget cuts will hurt most Americans but make rich people wealthier, Dwayne Fatherree, SPLC, 4/17/25
Yes, Trump Really Does Want to Kill Social Security, Jim Hightower, Lowdown, 4/17/25
States that enshrined Medicaid expansion in their constitutions could be in a bind: Missouri, Oklahoma and South Dakota will have to pick up the slack if the feds cut funding for the program, Shalina Chatlani, Stateline, 4/17/25
Jewish Demonstrators Hold “Emergency Passover Seder” Outside NYC’s ICE Offices: Thousands of demonstrators spoke out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the US’s detention of student activists, Chris Walker, Truthout, 4/15/25
At least
this torture
could last a bit less.
—from “About That,” Vladimir Mayakovsky
Science, Environment, Wilderness
The drafters of the Clean Air Act saw CO2 as a pollutant: Climate change and carbon dioxide came up regularly in ‘60s-era Congressional hearings, a team of Harvard historians has found, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 4/14/25: “…if anyone tries to claim that there’s no way Congress could have intended this statute to apply to carbon dioxide, it’s just wrong.”
First Global Comparison of Glacier Mass Change: They’re All Melting, and Fast: By systematically assessing data gathered by different methods, researchers refined estimates of global glacier melt and its contribution to sea level rise, Veronika Meduna, Eos, 4.15.25
‘Fossil fuels in another form’: Plastic recycling rate stagnates at under 10%, report finds, Lottie Limb, Euronews, 4/14/25: “…cut down on the production of virgin plastics.”
Trump’s Trade War Could Turbocharge Deforestation in the Amazon: Massive tariffs on China will drive up soybean production in Brazil at the rainforest’s expense, Sarah Sax, Atlantic, 4/16/25: “Rising soybean prices will boost demand for the cleared land that farmers generally need to grow the beans.”
EPA Deletes Pollution Tracking Tools as It Offers Exemptions to Polluters: A new lawsuit is challenging the Trump administration’s removal of environmental justice maps and datasets, Mike Ludwig, Truthout, 4/19/25
Why coal won’t solve the looming grid-reliability crisis: New solar, wind, and batteries could be a huge help to grid reliability. Instead, Trump is propping up a false solution: old, unprofitable coal plants, Jeff St. John, Canary Media, 4/14/25
25 years of Everglades restoration has improved drinking water for millions in Florida, but a new risk is rising, John Kominoski, The Conversation, 4/15/25: “An unforeseen threat has also started to creep into the Everglades: saltwater. As sea level rises, saltwater reaches further inland, both in rivers and underground through the porous limestone beneath South Florida.”
In my community of Moose Factory, the clean water crisis never really ends: The federal government promised to end long-term water advisories on First Nations reserves — but many Indigenous communities cope with a constant cycle of temporary advisories, with no fix in sight, Carrie Davis, The Narwhal, 4/16/25
The Elephant in the Room by Liz Kalaugher review – how we make animals sick: From frogs to ferrets, an eye-opening account of the ways we affect the health of other species – and vice versa, Edward Posnett, The Guardian, 4/17/25: Book: The Elephant in the Room: How to Stop Making Ourselves and Other Animals Sick
Clearly cool: A transparent paper-based material could replace single-use plastics: The millimeter-thick paperboard behaves just like plastic; it's strong, transparent, shapeable—and can hold boiling water. But it degrades within a year on the ocean floor, Team, Anthropocene, 4/16/25
A.I. Is Quietly Powering a Revolution in Weather Prediction: Weather forecasts powered by artificial intelligence are usually more accurate — and require less computational energy and fewer human hours — than conventional predictions. But questions remain about A.I. systems’ reliability and their ability to forecast extreme weather events, Nicola Jones, Yale E360, 4/14/25
How does your brain create new memories? Neuroscientists discover ‘rules’ for how neurons encode new information, William Wright, Takaki Omiyama, The Conversation, 4/17/25: “…neurons, by simultaneously using two different sets of rules for learning across different groups of synapses, rather than a single uniform rule, can more precisely tune the different types of inputs they receive to appropriately represent new information in the brain.”
Touch, Our Most Complex Sense, Is a Landscape of Cellular Sensors: Every soft caress of wind, searing burn and seismic rumble is detected by our skin’s tangle of touch sensors. David Ginty has spent his career cataloging the neurons beneath everyday sensations, Ariel Bleicher, Quanta, 4/16/25
Earth’s Ancient Microbes Offer Lessons for a More Livable Future, Jasmine Hardy, Atmos, 4/17/25: “…microbes don’t just persist, they innovate—a billion-year-plus promise that life always finds a way.”
Tell me your instinct toward prayer.
Tell me how to figure home. Tell me
where to search when the call comes
in our own voice: someone has taken
a four-day-old baby, butterfly on her back.
—from “Deep Learning,” Carolyn Oliver
Health, Wellness
Crisis to Care: 5 Charts on Black Maternal Health Progress: It’s Black Maternal Health Week. Here’s five areas the U.S. health system is improving in its care for Black birthing people, Anissa Durham, Word in Black, 4/15/25: “Black women in the United States are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women.”
Unsafe sleeping? Mattresses may expose children to toxins as they sleep, studies find, Shannon Kelleher, New Lede, 4/15/25
How to Keep Your Garden Free From Toxic Forever Chemicals: Is your big box store selling you soil contaminated with PFAS? Bill Pluecker, Barn Raiser, 4/17/25: “Avoid fertilizers or ‘compost’ made from sewage sludge.”
Birds, Birding
The Search for One of North America’s Rarest Birds: Scientists must journey to remote islands in the middle of the Bering Sea, braving uncertain conditions, to reach the breeding grounds of McKay's Buntings, Benjamin Hack, Audubon, Spring 2025 issue
AI uncovers how birds remix their songs over time, Abhishyant Kidangoor, MongaBay, 4/17/25: “The process of song acquisition relies on who they’re exposed to, the movement of individuals and the age of those individuals within populations.”
Because in all the evenings of this life,
I don't know which doors will be slammed in whose face,
and a something not mine grips my soul.
—from “Ágape,” César Vallejo, Tr by Margaret Jull Costa
Dearest friends – I compile these stories to help us keep track of what matters, to resist fear, and to fend off the despair that fear engenders.
We will defend what we believe in. Do not lose heart! Resist despair! Find joy! We are not alone.
Stay strong.
Love the ones you’re with. And take care of yourself too. Please keep in touch…
Love always—David
People have the power to redeem the work of fools.—Patti Smith
Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, otherwise it is no virtue at all.—G.K. Chesterton (1905)