The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 227, September 15, 2024 (V5 #19)
You’re only given a little spark of madness. You must not lose it.— Robin Williams
Stop worrying about AI taking over. It’s the people who own the AI who pose the biggest threat.—Ted Gioia
However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.—George Washington
Books, Music, Art, Culture
James Earl Jones’s talents went far, far beyond his magnificent voice: In a career that encompassed Broadway, Disney animation and Star Wars, the monumental performer turned authority figures into human beings, Peter Marks, Washington Post, 9/9/24: “Epic. The word epitomizes the gifts of a nonpareil American actor of stage and screen, a towering figure who shook solar systems as the voice of Darth Vader, who rattled Broadway’s rafters as Troy Maxson in ‘Fences,’ who regularly delivered captivating turns, whether as the Moor of Venice, the prize fighter of ‘The Great White Hope,’ the reclusive sage of ‘Field of Dreams.’”(No paywall)
Censorship Through Centuries: on the Long Fight for Queer Liberation: The Author of “Fierce Desires” Examines Battles Over Drag Story Hours and Book Bans Through the Lens of LGBTQ History, Rebecca L. Davis, LitHub, 9/9/24: “If we find ourselves struggling to understand the erotic fantasies or fears of a rising generation, we should think historically.”
Florida school district must restore books with LGBTQ+ content under settlement, APNews, 9/12/24: “Fighting unconstitutional legislation in Florida and across the country is an urgent priority.”
Of Unicorns: On My Little Pony, Lucy Ives, Paris Review, 9/9/24: “The tip is tiny, dainty. Obesity is impossible for the unicorn pony. Roughness is impossible. She is sleek, infinitely sleek. She is sleeker than water, for only my eye touches her outline. She is a slip, luscious as a basking fetus, supple as a cupid.”
Divesting from Doom: Changing the Stories We Tell Ourselves May Actually Change Reality, Douglas Rushkoff, Rushkoff, 9/10/24: “Our science may be correct, but it’s still oversimplified and limited. There’s no need to assume doom in advance…. We may not have absolute power over conditions on the ground. But we do have some, and our ability to exercise it in positive, pro-social, and sustainable ways depends on the stories we tell ourselves and each other about what the heck is really going on here.”
Q&A With Carmen Maria Machado, Tai Caputo, Little Hawk, 9/9/24: “I do see my work as political, and I don’t mean that in the sense that I sit down and am like, ‘What is my agenda?’ I exist in the world as a Latina, as a fat person, as a queer person, as a woman. And existing in those spaces and asserting my right to make art about what I want, and peoples’ ability to read and access that art, is also obviously very political. But I think that’s true even if the author is not queer, or is white, or whatever. I still think that what comes to readers and how readers access that work is also a political question. So yes, I would say that my work is political, but I would also say that all art is in some way political, even if [some people] think that politics does not exist [in art].”
Writing Out of Annihilation: In the Warsaw Ghetto, the journalist Rokhl Auerbach risked her life to capture the stories of the Jewish community and, by writing about the people she knew, memorialized an entire lost world, Ruth Franklin, NY Review of Books, 9/19/24 issue: “I had better luck saving documents than saving people.”
What Researchers Learned From the World’s Oldest Cookbook: Now, you can view—and cook from—these nearly 4,000-year-old ancient Babylonian recipe tablets, Diana Hubbell, Atlas Obscura, 9/11/24: “…the diversity of ingredients mentioned speaks to how sophisticated the trade routes of this interconnected society must have been.”
The Ocean Death That Created Civilization, Tomas Pueyo, Uncharted Territories, 9/11/24: “The shallowness of the ancient Tethys Ocean likely contributed to the pass between the Eurasian Plain and Central Asia, which was instrumental in the formation of the Silk Road and the exchange of trade and technologies across the supercontinent.” DW: you need to read the whole piece to get the full story.
“The Gift” and American Giving: The hardscrabble Osceola McCarty gave her life savings to young students. But was she the only "better angel?" ,Bruce Watson, The Attic, 9/15/24: “When I leave this world, I can’t take nothing away from here. Whatever I have, it’s going to be left right here for somebody. Some child can get their education, to help them along. I don’t regret one single penny I gave to the college. My only regret is that I didn’t have more to give.”
Sequential Bodies, Helen Chazan, Comics Journal, 9/11/24: “We expect language to function in a very linear sense. One word comes after the other. One sentence after the other. But the moment – let's say even in language, right? – when you start using parentheses, you start hyphenating, you are interrupting the flow. Even just referring back to an earlier moment in the text, you can go back to the text. All of these things make you realize like it's not linear. You realize that linear is just how we are taught to experience things. It's not really how we experience things.”
My mouth is the score
And my soul is where the music lies—from “Jazz Anatomy,” Ted Joans
Politics, Economics, Technology
Starting with a handshake, presidential debate between Harris and Trump then turns fierce, and pointed, Rodney Coates, Lee Banville, The Conversation, 9/11/24: “Americans will sit back and see what the echo chambers and cable outlets make of an exchange like the one on abortion. Will it fire up more women voters to back the Harris ticket or will it be lost in a sea of economic issues and immigration policy?”
Why Polling Is Opinion Journalism, In One Chart: We need to talk about the “margin of pollster,” Michael Podhorzer, Weekend Reading, 9/13/24: “…the most fundamental question is whether the future our children and grandchildren inherit from us is better served by our having the best possible ephemeral estimate of how many people support Harris or Trump today, or by our having the best possible public understanding of the full extent to which the freedoms we value are on the line.”
9/11’s Darkest Irony: Trump’s "Peace Candidate" Debate Scam Unraveled: Trump and the entire GOP are now furiously trying to rewrite their history of their using unnecessary wars to get re-elected - will it work? Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 9/11/24: “…according to opinion polls, it’s working because America’s corporate media pretty much refuses to point out Republican perfidy in any regard.”
I read the full 900-page Project 2025 manifesto – here’s why it matters: Heritage Foundation blueprint describes an America poisoned by ‘wokeness’ and overtaken by lawlessness that only conservatives can save, Rachel Leingang, The Guardian, 9/14/24: “It is at times less aggressive than its detractors would have you believe and at others far more wide-reaching and consequential than a simplistic infographic.”
Brutal Video Shows Pace of Trump’s Cognitive Decline Between Debates: A CNN segment revealed the stark difference between 2016 Trump and 2024 Trump, Hafiz Rashid, New Republic, 9/13/24: “The video comparison…shows how Trump would stay on topic and give coherent answers in 2016. In contrast, Trump earlier this week went off on tangents, rambling and avoiding specific ideas.”
How the contrived panic over Haitian immigrants hijacked our algorithms — and our brains: This is what cognitive warfare looks like, Caroline Orr Bueno, Weaponized, 9/14/24: “Think about how many other issues are being displaced by misinformation, and how many conversations are not being had because instead of talking about the issues that are affecting the majority of the people in this country, we end up being forced to talk about things that don’t actually affect anyone at all, and rather than using this time during election season to talk about very real issues with very real consequences, we’re stuck in a loop of talking about what’s not real and allowing our attention to be consumed by what’s not true.”
Grieving Ohio father to Trump and Vance: Stop using my son ‘for political gain:’ Aiden Clark’s death has been amplified by leading Republicans who have to sought to attack Vice President Kamala Harris on immigration, Azi Paybarah, Washington Post, 9/11/24: “…my son, Aiden Clark, was not murdered.”
Election Certification Refusers Are a Movement: Georgia Lawsuit Highlights Alarming Trend, Adam Klasfeld, Just Security, 9/11/24: “Emboldened by Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 presidential contest, once-modest public servants tasked with a clerical yet crucial role in election administration have tried to anoint themselves as the arbiters of the races within their jurisdictions — and grown into a national movement.”
Fears mount that election deniers could disrupt vote count in US swing states: At least 239 election deniers have signed up to Trump’s ‘election integrity’ conspiracy theories, survey finds, Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, 9/13/24
Elon Musk’s misleading election claims reach millions and alarm election officials: The X billionaire’s false posts about noncitizen voting spur officials to fact-check him, lead to requests to purge voter rolls, and add to worries about threats, election officials say, Sarah Ellison, Amy Gardner, Clara Ence Morse, Washington Post, 9/10/24
Elon Musk’s feud with Brazilian judge is much more than a personal spat − it’s about national sovereignty, freedom of speech and the rule of law, Yasmin Curzi de Mendonça, The Conversation, 9/9/24: “And while the focus is on Brazil and Musk, it is a debate being echoed around the world.”
'The real villain': How the Supreme Court is quietly working to keep Trump out of jail, Carl Gibson, Alternet, 9/12/24: “…the conservative justices issued a ruling that not only established a sweeping and poorly defined immunity but also created so many avenues for challenge and confusion that the Court functionally collaborated in Trump’s strategy of delay.”
The Man Behind the Right-Wing Supreme Court Wants to “Crush” the Liberal Media: The conservative activist Leonard Leo has declared his intention to spend $1 billion on promoting right-wing ideas in news and entertainment, Chris Lehmann, The Nation, 9/10/24: “In other words, with a minimal commitment of cash and ideological discipline, Leonard Leo will no doubt find the American media a most obliging playing field.”
The Enduring Wisdom of America's Founding Documents: A liberal reading of the Declaration of Independence, William Galston, Persuasion, 9/11/24: “The Declaration of Independence is the founding charter of American liberalism, which is why a careful reading of this document can help blunt several of the charges that antiliberals often level at liberal governance.”
How a Small Town Murder in Oklahoma Sparked a Supreme Court Battle Over Tribal Sovereignty: on the Independence of the Muscogee Nation, Rebecca Nagle, LitHub, 9/10/24: “Many of the most important legal decisions about tribal land and sovereignty come from surprising places.” Book: By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land
Modern Gun Ownership is Just Another Consumer Fantasy About Empowerment: a Different Story of US Gun Culture, Alex Trimble Young, LitHub, 9/9/24: “This conception of individual empowerment, so central to our contemporary gun culture, is neither an anachronistic remnant of a violent past nor an immutable foundation of American democracy.”
Why Are We Letting Corporate Profiteers Write America’s Farm and Food Policy? Jim Hightower, Lowdown, 9/13/24: “Our national “farm policy” is not written by farmers but by corporate lobbyists, lawyers, and economists – people who couldn’t run a watermelon stand if we gave them the melons and had the highway patrol flag down the customers for them.”
What Scared Ford’s CEO in China: Jim Farley is changing strategy to combat what he calls an ‘existential threat’ from China’s electric carmakers, Mike Colias, Wall Street Journal, 9/14/24 (No paywall)
A New Trilemma Haunts the World Economy, Dani Rodrik, Project Syndicate, 9/9/24: “It may be impossible simultaneously to combat climate change, boost the middle class in advanced economies, and reduce global poverty. Under current policy trajectories, any combination of two goals appears to come at the expense of the third.”
The Richest Man in Germany Is Worth $44 Billion. The Source of His Family Fortune? The Nazis Know: Klaus-Michael Kuehne, born in 1937, has more money than Ken Griffin, MacKenzie Scott, or François Pinault. Just don’t ask him how he got so rich, David De Jong, Vanity Fair, 9/12/24: “Kuehne’s stance places him in the ranks of those who want to ‘exonerate’ German history from its Nazi past.”
The Angst and Sorrow of Jewish Currents: A little magazine wants to criticize Israel while holding on to Jewishness, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New Yorker, 9/9/24: “If Jewish communities in the diaspora care for the future and well-being of Jews in the land between the river and the sea, they should act against Israeli policies and its war of destruction in Gaza.”
As I was walkin’ I saw a sign there
And the sign said “No Trespassin’”
But the other side, it didn’t say nothin’
That side was made for you and me.—from “This Land is Your Land,” Woody Guthrie
Science, Environment
The Texas Billionaire Who Has Greenpeace USA on the Verge of Bankruptcy: Energy Transfer’s Kelcy Warren, a hypercompetitive mogul, is behind a lawsuit that could deal environmentalists a grievous blow, Benoît Morenne, Wall Street Journal, 9/8/24: “Warren sees green activists, who he once said should be “removed from the gene pool,” as a serious threat to the industry.”
‘Above the poison’: Mohawk land defenders refuse to surrender Barnhart Island to New York: Akwesasne citizens disagree with elected leaders' choice to accept US$70M payout, saying island is less contaminated by former GM, Reynolds Metals and Alcoa sites than the rest of their territory, Brandi Morin, Narwhal, 9/14/24
One of the most potent greenhouse gases is rising faster than ever: Methane emissions from fossil fuels, farms and landfills will make it impossible for the world to maintain a safe climate, scientists say, Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post, 9/10/24: “…methane levels in the atmosphere are tracking those projected by the worst-case climate scenarios.”
This Fire Is Too Close to L.A. for Comfort: Urban spillover is becoming a greater threat as wildfires grow, Caroline Mimbs Nyce, The Atlantic, 9/10/24: “From downtown Los Angeles all the way out to the edge of the Line Fire is sprawl that turns into more sprawl…. wildfires in the West are growing so big, and so quickly, that cities are becoming vulnerable too.”
Breadfruit Is Here to Save the World: This calorie-rich, nutrient-dense, and climate-resilient crop has the power to step in for more common staples that can’t handle global warming, Richard Schiffman, Wired, 9/11/24: “There’s not really a climate that is too hot for breadfruit.”
The FDA is reassessing how they manage chemicals in our food. Here’s why you should care: The public can weigh in on how the US regulates chemicals in food additives and packaging, EHN Curators, Environmental Health News, 9/13/24
How do we address 57 million tons of plastic pollution? Turn off the tap, Katherine McMahon, Sarah Howard, Environmental Health News, 9/13/24: “…addressing the global plastic crisis will require limitations on the production and use of new plastics, not just better waste management.”
Consumerism and the climate crisis threaten equitable future for humanity, report says: The Earth Commission says hope lies in sustainable lifestyles, a radical transformation of global politics and fair distribution of resources, Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, 9/12/24
How Agroforestry Could Help Revitalize America’s Corn Belt: By practicing agroforestry — growing trees alongside crops and livestock, for example — farmers can improve soils, produce nutrient-rich foods, and build resilience to climate change. Now, a movement is emerging to bring this approach to the depleted lands of the Corn Belt, Tom Philpott, Yale Environment 360, 9/10/24
Therapy groups for eco-distress are spreading globally to help people cope with climate anxiety: Group therapy sessions, such as those offered by the Good Grief Network, are helping people around the world manage feelings of anxiety, grief and despair linked to climate change, EHN Curators, The Daily Climate, 9/10/24
How Genes Shape Personality Traits: New Links Are Discovered, Eva Cornman, Yale School of Medicine, 9/9/24: “Even if we can measure genetically the associations to traits like neuroticism, that doesn’t mean that you can’t alter your strategies for dealing with life in ways that could help you achieve better outcomes.”
A rumble echoed around the world for nine days. Here’s what caused it: It took about 70 people from 15 different countries and more than 8,000 exchanged messages to crack the case, Kasha Patel, Washington Post, 9/12/24: “A mega-tsunami created waves that sloshed back and forth in a fjord in Greenland, creating vibrations that traveled around the world.”
come on now we’ve still got
some living to do pick up that trumpet
I’ve got mine already never mind
we can’t play any instruments
the point is to make a sound
any sound in this endless parade
shimmering toward silence
—from “Hello I Must Be Going,” David Hernandez
Health, Wellness
Girls may be starting puberty earlier due to chemical exposure: Study, Sharon Udasin, The Hill, 9/10/24: “Substances of particular concern include musk ambrette — a fragrance used in some detergents, perfumes and personal care products — and a group of medications called cholinergic agonists, according to the study, published on Tuesday in Endocrinology.”
Experimental mRNA cancer vaccine shows potential for advanced stage cancer patients in Phase 1 trial, King’s College London, Science Daily, 9/13/24
The Bird Flu Outbreak Takes a Mysterious Turn: US health officials say they don’t know how a patient in Missouri contracted bird flu, Emily Mullin, Wired, 9/13/24
Birds, Birding
American Golden-Plovers: Plucky little survivors. Except when they’re not, Laura Erickson, For the Birds, 9/9/24: “American Golden-Plovers breed up on the tundra of northern Canada and Alaska, but they winter all the way down in southern South America in the pampas of Argentina and the campos of Uruguay.”
Bedlam on the beach: The comings, goings, and carryings on of shorebirds in Northern California, Pete Myers, Environmental Health News, 9/9/24: “The higher the tide, the more shorebirds are forced from the mudflats to the beach.”
When Swarms of Birds Attack Other Birds, They are Using a Mobbing Technique: What is mobbing behavior? When birds attack other birds, they are using a technique to scare away predators, Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover, 9/12/24
The goldfinches are back, or others like them,
and the white-throated sparrow's five-note song,
pleading and pleading, brings tears to the eyes.
Nature repeats herself, or almost does:
repeat, repeat, repeat; revise, revise, revise.
—from “North Haven,” Elizabeth Bishop
Harris, in short, narrowly won the debate on points, but it was far from the knockout being claimed. She will need to maximize every opportunity going forward if we are to be spared a second Trump term.—Robert Kuttner
Election countdown: 51 days until the most consequential election of our lifetimes.
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Do whatever you can in the next weeks to make a difference for all of us. It matters.
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 always—David