The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 180, October 22, 2023 (V4 #24)
We have no excuse for defeatism. We have every good reason for hope — hope for peace, yes, and hope for the defense of our civilization and for the building of a better civilization in the future.—Joe Biden
I'll be pleased when I'm dead. That will let me off worrying about all these wars.—Doris Lessing
Books and Culture
“A Holographic Poemsong”: Joy Harjo on Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue:” In Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine, the Nobel Prize winner is celebrated across more than 1,100 images by 135 artists and 30 original essays focusing on unseen treasures from the Bob Dylan Archive. In one, poet and musician Harjo examines why Dylan’s 1975 track caught the ears of so many, Joy Harjo, Vanity Fair, 10/17/23: “We were bent by history, defined by it, even destroyed by it, but like others of my generation, beset by violence and tragedy, we were inspired by Dylan and other singers and players who lifted our spirits, who inspired us to pay attention and keep going through the story that we are making, all of us.” Buy the book: Bob Dylan: Mixing up the Medicine
‘The band, the scene… I put it all in there’: Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore on his memoir of a rock’n’roll life, Sean O’Hagan, The Guardian, 10/22/23: “With cameos from William Burroughs and Iggy Pop, Sonic Life – the musician’s new autobiography – chronicles his long relationship with Kim Gordon and life at the vanguard of US indie-rock.” Buy the book: Sonic Life: A Memoir
Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka on a Lifetime of Art and Activism: Aysegül Sert Talks to the Nigerian Writer in Paris, LitHub, 10/19/23: “It is sufficient that a writer opens up possibilities. The fact is that something is being presented, a different view is presented, that’s what matters.”
Mr. Bellow’s Planets: A Conversation with Zachary Leader, George Stanica, LA Review of Books, 10/18/23: “Bellow wrote long books, and his continuing influence is under threat partly because of that, as well as because of the ideas he expressed in his novels.”
The Transgressor: RJ Smith’s biography of Chuck Berry examines his subject’s instinct for crossing the line musically, racially, and morally, Philip Clark, NY Review of Books, 10/19/23 issue
What ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ taught my Oklahoma town, Dennis McAuliffe, Jr., Washington Post, 10/17/23: “…what do moviemakers owe a community that they use and profit from?”
On the Ending of a Literary Journal: John Freeman Says Goodbye to Freeman's, Freeman’s, LitHub, 10/18/23: “Little magazines have a history of utopian thinking and short life spans.”
Et Tu, Scholastic Book Fair? The grade-school institution is in trouble for unnecessary reasons, Rebecca Onion, Slate, 10/17/23: “The dreaded “opt-in” box may not be the death of the Scholastic Book Fair this time, but it’s clear the company has so far only found a solution that will make no one happy.”
Iowa's new book-banning law just blasted tons of great titles from the canon, Aldous J Pennyfarthing, Daily Kos, 10/19/23: “This week, the Iowa City Community School District released a list of 68 books that it removed from schools to comply with the law. Among the titles: “Ulysses” by James Joyce, “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult, “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison.”
Carla Bley, Jazz Composer, Arranger and Provocateur, Dies at 87: Her music, which ranged from chamber miniatures to blaring fanfares, was suffused with a slyly subversive attitude, Nate Chinen, NY Times, 10/17/23: “There’s nobody that plays like me — why would they? So if I’ve had an influence, maybe it would be if they decided to play like themselves. In other words, the whole idea of not playing like anybody is a way of playing.”
How the Iron Horse Spelled Doom for the American Buffalo: on General Custer, Buffalo Bill and Grand Duke Alexis, Dayton Duncan, Ken Burns, LitHub, 10/16/23: “I love the land and the buffalo and will not part with it. I want you to understand what I say. Write it on paper. I don’t want to settle. I love to roam over the prairies. There I feel free and happy, but when we settle down we grow pale and die. A long time ago this land belonged to our fathers; but when I go up the river I see camps of soldiers on its banks. These soldiers cut down my timber; they kill my buffalo; and when I see that, my heart feels like bursting. I have spoken.” (Santanta, Kiowa chief). Buy the book: Blood Memory: The Tragic Decline and Improbable Resurrection of the American Buffalo
Looking for a ride to your secret location
Where the kids are setting up a free-speed nation for you
Got a foghorn and a drum and a hammer that's rockin'
And a cord and a pedal and a lock, that'll do me for now
—from “Teenage Riot,” Sonic Youth
Politics and Economics
Do Arab States Support Palestine? If you look at a map of countries that recognize Palestine, you’d think most Arab states want an independent Palestine, Tomas Pueyo, Uncharted Territories, 10/17/23: “Arab neighboring states used to support Palestinians only insofar as they destabilized and threatened Israel. They had no use for a Palestinian state, and little tolerance for the actual plight of Palestinians.”
Is Hamas winning the war? Yuval Noah Harari, Washington Post, 10/19/23: “Hamas launched this war with a specific political aim: to prevent peace.”
Israel’s Strategic Crisis, Lawrence Freedman, Comment is Freed, 10/18/23: “The real challenge is to find an agreed political formula for Gaza which at least reduces Hamas’s political and military role.”
Warning: Benjamin Netanyahu is walking right into Hamas’s trap: They crave a rage-filled reaction from Israel’s prime minister. Wise heads should temper his response – and then be rid of him, Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, 10/20/23
I lost my parents in the Hamas attack. My family want peace, not revenge for their deaths: People from both sides of the border have reasons to hate one another, but the only way to end this war is to treat each other humanely, Magen Inon, The Guardian, 10/19/23: “Our shared future is based on the belief that all human beings are equal, and deserving of respect and safety. This is how I was raised and how I am raising my own children. In the long term, and even if it’s very far away, the only real future is that of hope and peace. Please, stop the war.”
President of Detroit synagogue found stabbed to death outside home: Samantha Woll was active in Democratic politics and had been deputy district director for Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Razzan Nakhlawi, Washington Post, 10/21/23
A Brighter Future for Poland: The opposition’s startling election victory upends narratives about Eastern Europe’s illiberal drift, Michal Kranz, Persuasion, 10/20/23: “…the seeds have been sown for Poland to break out of its traditional political confines, potentially opening the door for it to pursue a more dynamic, democratic, yet still fundamentally Polish future.”
America's zombie "crime wave,” Judd Legum, Tesnim Zekeria, Rebecca Crosby, Popular Information, 10/17/23: “the property crime rate in the US has fallen an astounding 61 percent since 1991 even accounting for the somewhat sizable increase in 2022.”
The GOP’s Secret to Protecting Gerrymandered Electoral Maps? Claim Privilege: Through new and expansive assertions of privilege, Republican legislatures around the country are shielding their work on allegedly discriminatory voting maps to prevent the public from finding out how and why they made their decisions, Marilyn W. Thompson, ProPublica, 10/18/23
A Party Unfit For Government: From Trump to Jordan, the GOP is a nihilist, incoherent shit-show, Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish, 10/20/23: “Their candidate is a terrifying joke. Their party, as it has devolved into Bannonism, is a cancer on our democracy.”
Jim Jordan’s Conspiratorial Quest for Power: How the Ohio Republican built an insurgent bid for Speaker on the lies of Donald Trump, Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker, 10/21/23: “People who want power find a way to get there.” (DW: very long article, worth the time to read)
The House Mess Is What GOP Voters Wanted: This is chaos by choice, not by accident, Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 10/18/23: “The disorder in the GOP caucus is not some accident or glitch triggered by a handful of reprobates, but rather a direct result of choices by voters. The House is a mess because enough Republican voters want it to be a mess.”
What Will Americans Do When Birth Control is Illegal? Are Republicans warming up the jail cells they want to put American women into who have the temerity to continue using birth control after the GOP’s bans take effect? Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 10/20/23
Beyond the Myth of Rural America: Its inhabitants are as much creatures of state power and industrial capitalism as their city-dwelling counterparts, Daniel Immerwahr, New Yorker, 10/16/23: “To call 1,500 acres of corn, genetically modified to withstand harsh chemical pesticides and intended for a high-fructose corn syrup factory, a ‘farm’ is a bit like calling a highly automated GM factory a ‘workshop.’” Book: The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is--And Isn't (Steven Conn)
A Prominent Museum Obtained Items From a Massacre of Native Americans in 1895. The Survivors’ Descendants Want Them Back: After the mass killing at Wounded Knee, the American Museum of Natural History received children’s toys taken from the site. A 1990 law was meant to “expeditiously return” such items to Native Americans, but descendants are still waiting, Nicole Santa Cruz, ProPublica, 10/20/23
A ‘Godfather of AI’ Calls for an Organization to Defend Humanity: Yoshua Bengio’s pioneering research helped bring about ChatGPT and the current AI boom. Now he’s worried AI could harm civilization and says the future needs a humanity defense organization, Susan D’Agostino, Wired, 10/17/23
How the Fossil Fuel Industry Pays for Lies to School Children: If it weren’t for the ability to bribe politicians and school board members, we’d have honest science textbooks in Red states; instead, their children are being criminally dumbed down & misinformed…Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 10/18/23
In Defense of Freedom, Steve Schmidt, The Warning, 10/20/23: “It is important to remember something. Democracy has enemies. There are some who hate your freedom. It only takes a man like Trump, Putin or Xi to take it away.”
A memorial in Yiddish, Italian and English tells the stories of Triangle Shirtwaist fire victims − testament not only to tragedy but to immigrant women’s fight to remake labor laws, Karla Goldman, The Conversation, 10/20/23: “The new memorial calls on the passersby to stop, note and honor that one horrific half-hour, etched indelibly into the story of the city and the nation.”
Apples and women's work: When blessings feel like curses, Lyz Lenz, Men Yell at Me, 10/18/23: “How much of my effort is needed? How much of it is wasted? Is my labor a form of control? Or in it do I find nourishment? Are these questions themselves a form of labor?”
we Jews have been accused of love of life,
delighting in the flesh,
but though we shall die along a thousand roads
we will not stay—
striking roots
somewhere
to flourish
as we flourished,
giving shade and fruit.
—from “Spain, Anno 1492,” by Charles Reznikoff
Science and Environment
DeepMind Wants to Use AI to Solve the Climate Crisis: WIRED spoke with DeepMind’s climate lead about techno-utopianism, ways AI can help fight climate change, and what’s currently standing in the way, Amit Katwala, Wired, 10/18/23: “The techno-optimist’s view is that—provided we’re able to wield it effectively—we’re able to use a transformative tool like AI to solve sector-specific and non-sector-specific problems more quickly, and at a scale we wouldn’t be able to without AI.”
Energy from Heaven and not from Hell/Exxon, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 10/17/23: “… if you took just the farm fields in America currently grown corn used as ethanol and covered them with solar panels, you’d be able to provide all the power America needs.”
‘This place wanted to be a wetland’: how a farmer turned his fields into a wildlife sanctuary: Once, Karl Wenner’s Oregon land leaked pollution into a nearby lake. Now, 70 acres are home to waterfowl, turtles and endangered fish, Gabrielle Canon, The Guardian, 10/22/23
Research: Solar panel prices are dropping without sacrificing quality: Newer, cheaper solar panels are just as durable as older, pricier models, according to a study at Sandia National Laboratories, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 10/18/23
Thoughts on techno-optimism: What it means to me, and why I support it, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 10/20/23: “The main reason I think technological progress is usually good for humanity — why I’m a techno-optimist of the “normative” variety — is that I fundamentally believe that humans should be given as much choice as possible.”
States opposed tribes’ access to the Colorado River 70 years ago. History is repeating itself: Records shed new light on states’ vocal opposition in the 1950s to tribes claiming their share of the river, Anna V. Smith, Mark Olalde, High Country News, 10/17/23: “This grave loss to the tribe will preclude future development of the reservation and otherwise prevent the beneficial development of the reservation intended by the Congress.”
21 species removed from endangered list due to extinction, U.S. wildlife officials say, Aliza Chasan, CBS News, 10/16/23: "Federal protection came too late to reverse these species' decline, and it's a wake-up call on the importance of conserving imperiled species before it's too late.”
Chum Salmon Are Spawning in the Arctic. It’s an Ominous Sign: The fish may be a harbinger of dramatic warming in the north—and rapidly transforming ecosystems, Matt Simon, Wired, 10/18/23
Wildlife across the globe are polluted with flame retardants: Map: From whales to voles, the toxics are accumulating in hundreds of species, EHN Staff, Environmental Health News, 10/19/23
Fur seals are declining thanks to lack of food and climate change, study finds: Krill populations are plummeting due to warming waters, which leaves fur seals without meals, Matthew Rozsa, Salon, 10/18/23
Corn Harvests in the Yukon? Study Finds That Climate Change Will Boost Likelihood That Wilderness Gives Way to Agriculture: As new areas become suitable for planting, researchers predict that vast swaths of biodiversity will be at risk, particularly in northern regions and the tropics, Kiley Price, Inside Climate News, 10/19/23
‘No normal seasons any more’: seed farmers struggle amid the climate crisis: Floods, freezes and heatwaves threaten seed production as farmers scramble to produce strains that resist climate chaos, Lela Nargi, The Guardian, 10/16/23
America Needs Oncologists...to deal with the malignancy that is corn belt agriculture, Chris Jones, Chris Jones’ Substack, 10/22/23: “…their real mission is to extract C-notes from the world’s best soil and if a few people have to die of cancer or other diseases because of it, then so be it.”
Computers translate jungle cacophony into a biodiversity barometer: Scientists in an Ecuadorian forest used audio recorders and AI to gauge biodiversity. Such tools could revolutionize monitoring for ecosystem health, Warren Cornwall, Anthropocene, 10/18/23
These Cells Spark Electricity in the Brain. They’re Not Neurons: For decades, researchers have debated whether brain cells called astrocytes can signal like neurons. Researchers recently published the best evidence yet that some astrocytes are part of the electrical conversation, Laura Dattaro, Quanta, 10/18/23: “More and more we come to the idea that there is a participation of all the cell types to the function of the brain.”
How plants communicate with each other when in danger, Kasha Patel, Washington Post, 10/21/23: “The study marks the first time researchers have been able to ‘visualize plant-to-plant communication.’”
the impulse of water is the moss against
is the growing in spite of
—from “the river,” by Emily Lee Luan
Health and Wellness
It’s breast cancer awareness month. Let’s prevent the everyday exposures that raise our risk: Prevention is about more than just diet, exercise and regular checks, Kristina Marusic, Environmental Health News, 10/19/23
Revolutionary Bionic Hand Fuses With Woman's Bones, Muscles, And Nerves, Carly Cassella, ScienceAlert, 10/17/23: “The prosthetic hand has been named Mia Hand, and it was developed by the Italian company, Prensilia, which specializes in robotic and biomedical devices, and funded by the European Commission.”
The Coronavirus Still Doesn’t Care About Your Feelings: The Covid-19 pandemic is not a state of mind—and telling us not to panic isn’t healthcare, Arijit Chakravarty, Martha Lincoln, The Nation, 10/13/23
The Body and the Mind are One, Not Two
The alligators of San Jacinto Plaza are dead.
The earth, poor thing, is sloughing off species like dead skin.
I went down Oregon Street
The feral black cat with a white hind foot
Ducked into a sewer. Across the street
Numberless blackbirds and grackles rattled
Sexual innuendo in those two lonely elm trees on Texas Avenue.
Pancho Villa used to walk down this very street, fiddling
With his big moustache. A herd of sycophants
Hovered around him, muttering
About guns and death and the vile Diaz.
Pancho paid them no never-mind.
His sweet tooth was throbbing. He headed
Toward the Elite Confectionary to eat
Chocolate covered ice cream balls.
AKA “Baseballs” and peanut brittle.
He’d chase the mess with a strawberry soda.
Hundreds of thousands of men died in that war.
The earth continues to grow soggy with human blood.
Why can’t we stop?
—Bobby Byrd
Every day it feels like the precipice grows nearer. We are living through an era of disruption and danger. Questions abound. How should we live? What should we do? How can we overcome our fear and those who instill it in us? Is sharing the values we believe in going to be enough? I believe that we have it in us to overcome, and to transform anger and grief into joy and beauty, and I hope sharing as much as I can about what is going on will contribute to that process in some small way.
Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, thanks for who you are and what you do. Please keep in touch. Stay well. Share love. I am with you.—David