The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 246, January 26, 2025 (V5 #38)
Fascists depend on convincing us to give our power away and fall in line, that the fight is over and we lost. And while we must be clear-eyed about the threat, we must not do the fascists’ work for them by giving them powers they do not have.—Indivisible
Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.— Martin Luther King Jr.
Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on Earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne…—Mariann Edgar Budde
Books, Music, Art, Culture
Jules Feiffer, cartoonist of acerbic wit and satire, dies at 95: The Pulitzer-winning writer found his voice in comics that provided a sardonic and sarcastic takedown of authority and conventional wisdom. He was also a playwright and screenwriter, Ali Bahrampour, Washington Post, 1/21/25
‘I’m doing something with my misery’: a Parkland parent takes his grief to the stage: Manuel Oliver’s son was murdered at school in 2018 and he’s been telling his devastating story at theatres across the US, David Smith, The Guardian, 1/21/25: “It was painful before it became a script for theatre and it’s still painful. But at least I’m doing something with my misery. I’m using my sadness to prevent others going through the same situation.”
This Be the Place: A Blue Wall in Leadville: Suddenly I got why writers write all those books about the color blue, immersive as a dream, Mathias Svalina, Poetry Foundation, 1/21/25: “How the impossible blue of a blue wall couldn’t be the blue of memory, a blue no photograph can contain. Maybe to make a place holy, you must remember it more than real life allows, with all the truth of a squint, all the grace of peeling paint.”
Writing Dust: An Interview with Summer Brenner, Jane Rosenberg LaForge, Rain Taxi, Winter 2024: “Stereotypes and archetypes are typically reductive, with recognizable signs that let a reader automatically draw predictable, foregone, even formulaic conclusions. I tried to draw fully individual portraits with minimal but very precise brushstrokes.” Book: Dust: A Memoir
Saying Goodbye to The Band: With Garth Hudson’s passing on Tuesday, the rock ‘n’ roll giants have left us for good. While they were together, Hudson, Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Levon Helm and Rick Danko were scientists from far greater Heavens than most of us will ever know, pulling art from their bodies in ways that made miracles sound ordinary, Matt Mitchell, Paste, 1/22/25.
Goodbye to that country home, so long, lady I have known,
Farewell to my other side, I'd best just take it in stride
Unfaithful servant, you'll learn to find your place
I can see it in your smile, and, yes, I can see it in your face
—from “Unfaithful Servant” (written by Robbie Robertson)
Signature moves: are we losing the ability to write by hand? We are far more likely to use our hands to type or swipe than pick up a pen. But in the process we are in danger of losing cognitive skills, sensory experience – and a connection to history, Christine Rosen, The Guardian, 1/21/25
The Strange Power of Laughter: An anthropologist explores laughter as a far more complex phenomenon than simple delight—reflecting on its surprising power to disturb and disrupt, Kirsten Bell, Sapiens, 1/21/25: “…laughter disrupts the notion of a stable, coherent self—reflected in terms like ‘cracking up’ and ‘bursting.’”
Want good luck this year? Try these Lunar New Year traditions from NPR readers, Suzanne Nuyen, NPR, 1/26/25: “What you do on the first day of the new year is how your year will go.” January 29 begins the Year of the Wood Snake.
Dream Density: the navel of the dream and David Lynch, Emmalea Russo, Cosmic Edges, 1/21/25: “No operation, said the alchemists, should be performed, until all has become WATER. Like, die and dissolve first. First, the ocean, the dream, Piscean finality.”
What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction? From the pianoforte to the smartphone, each wave of tech has sparked fears of brain rot. But the problem isn’t our ability to focus—it’s what we’re focussing on, Daniel Immerwahr, New Yorker, 1/20/25: “ The overheating of discourse, the rise of conspiratorial thinking, the hollowing out of shared truths: all these trends are real and deserve careful thought. The panic over lost attention is, however, a distraction.”
The Paranoid Thriller That Foretold Trump’s Foreign Policy: Some of the president’s policies are stranger than fiction, Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 1/23/25: “Night of Camp David today raises fewer disturbing questions about Trump than it does about America. How did the United States, as a nation, travel the distance from 1965—when the things Trump says would have been considered signs of a mental or emotional disorder—to 2025, where Americans and their elected officials merely shrug at a babbling chief executive who talks repeatedly and openly about annexing Canada?”
Men Have Bigger Problems Than Not Reading Novels, What’s Wrong With Men is What’s Wrong With America, James Folta, LitHub, 1/24/25: “Above all else, a man reading is silent. In short, and even though it won’t solve everything, my advice to my fellow American men is to shut the fuck up and read a novel.”
As an American, the camera is always on.
I waste too much time trying to figure out how I look.
The best trend is always a change or a return, settling
into reruns and knowing what they're not.
But didn't I realize that? Expansion isn't limitless,
and you can't choose something into truth,
like you can into concept.
—from “(no subject)” by Peter Burghardt
Politics, Economics, Technology
Honoring Service: Cecile Richards, Joyce Vance, Civil Discourse, 1/20/25: “It’s not hard to imagine future generations one day asking: ‘When there was so much at stake for our country, what did you do?’ The only acceptable answer is: ‘Everything we could.’ That is how she lived her life.”
‘We Have Seen a Lot More Hate’: Trans People Are Already Terrified: After Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order directed against trans people this week, trans and nonbinary people are scared of what happens next, David Gilbert, Wired, 1/24/25
Trump’s Definitions of “Male” and “Female” Are Nonsense Science With Staggering Ramifications: “How can you so fully misunderstand basic human biology and then legislate about it?” Madison Pauly, Mother Jones, 1/23/25: “The potential implications and scope of this executive order are limited only by our imagination.”
How Meta’s policy updates could encourage hate and threaten democracy, Lindsey Shelton, Southern Poverty Law Center, 1/24/25: “Fighting misinformation, disinformation and hate speech should be a top priority of both traditional and social media companies.”
Hitler Pardoned His Goons Too: Trump’s Actions' Parallels with Germany 1935, Harry Litman, Talking Feds, 1/23/25: “our 47th president, in his very first hours in office, has become a profound traitor and extreme menace to the country as a whole.”
Energized neo-Nazis feel their moment has come as Trump changes everything: Far-right chatrooms are abuzz as extremists plan to use the next four years as ‘breathing room’ and look to expand, Ben Makuch, The Guardian, 1/26/25: “Extreme-right groups are focusing on mass deportations and seeking to win over potential recruits by concentrating on this issue.”
The Second Trump Presidency, Brought to You by YouTubers: Podcasters including Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Logan Paul are mobilizing America’s men to lean right. An analysis of over 2,000 videos shows how, Davey Alba et al, Bloomberg, 1/22/25: “With the podcasters’ audiences skewing about 80% male on average…the hosts connected directly to a voting bloc that helped propel Trump back to the White House.”
Welcome to Vichy America: After the Fall, Jon Ganz, Unpopular front, 1/21/25: “If you want an analogy for the present state of America it’s perhaps not an out-and-out fascist regime, but a Vichy regime. It’s partly fascist but mostly just a reactionary and defeatist catch-all. It’s a regime born of capitulation and of defeat: of the slow and then sudden collapse of the longstanding institutions of a great democracy whose defenders turned out to be senile and unable to cope with or understand modern politics.”
The Great Revenge: Trump’s Orwellian America Takes Shape: Get ready for investigations, arrests, and show trials of the people who’ve tried to hold Trump accountable for his crimes and traitorous behavior…Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 1/23/25: “The “Weaponization” EO makes clear from the start that it’s not about ending but, rather, beginning the weaponization of the federal government.”
What Just Happened: What Trump’s Hobbling of the Privacy Oversight Board Portends for Exercise of Surveillance Powers, Andrew Weissmann, Just Security, 1/22/25: “Bottom line is that as of now there is one less independent body of smart, experienced people to root out wrongdoing and abuse.”
The Revisionist History of the Nazi Salute: Elon Musk’s defenders were quick to claim that his hand motion was actually an ancient “Roman salute” — but that gesture never existed, Sarah E. Bond, Stephanie Wong, HyperAllergic, 1/22/25: “Mussolini and the Fascist Party of Italy later drew on films and misinterpretations of art in the development of their signature salute around 1925.”
Sieg heil Tesla: Yes, you did see what you think you saw. Here's an idea, let's call a Nazi salute a Nazi salute, Carole Cadwalladr, The Power, 1/26/25: “So much has happened this week, so fast, and so many people are “taking a break” from the news. And that’s why this feels so singularly dangerous.”
Defeating the Cancer of Trumpism, John Pavlovitz, The Beautiful Mess, 1/26/25: “This must be the rise of We the Pissed-Off People. This will need to be American humanity moving in concert; bound together by our belief in one another’s worth, by the knowledge that Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are not currently available to everyone, by the conviction that this President is a threat to the very best things about this nation, by the refusal to let America be taken backward, by the belief that love will get the last, loudest word.”
How to Take Heart From What Really Worked in the First Resistance: Marches and lawsuits are fine, but the real wins over MAGA last time were powered by grassroots activists pushing from thousands of districts across the country, Theda Skocpol, New Republic, 1/24/25
Forget #Resistance. How Democrats Gave Trump Victory After Victory: Is Trump’s return to the Oval Office simply Democrats’ chickens coming home to roost? Prem Thakker, Zeteo, 1/24/25: “Just as Democrats have allowed Republicans to dictate the conversation on immigration and frame the “normal” bounds of discussion, they enabled Trump’s efforts to overturn the election to be assimilated into just another feature of American politics.”
Fridays in Trumpland: 1.23.2025: The Unraveling, or The Moment We Decide, Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, ECM, 1/24/25: “We can choose to fight. We can choose to not comply. We can choose to speak up whenever and however we can. We can choose to help ourselves and others to survive and to be safe and to evade the damage he seeks to inflict on so many of us. And then, we can choose to heal in spite of him. All this can be done.”
Learning How to Breathe in the Era of Trump, Rabbi Brant Rosen, Shalom Rav, 1/24/25: “… we might view the Jewish practice of giving thanks for our breath every morning as much more than a simple prayer discipline: it is nothing less than a statement of connection and solidarity with all that lives.”
How the oil industry and growing political divides turned climate change into a partisan issue, Joe Árvai, The Conversation, 1/22/25: “Building on the analogy of a rivalry in sports, the red vs. blue state dynamic tapped into the psychological and social forces that shape our sense of belonging and identity.”
Don't Believe the Hype, Trump's First Moves are Very Unpopular: A new poll shows that voters are not on board with the MAGA agenda, Dan Pfeiffer, Message Box, 1/21/25: “…new polling shows that the public is not on board with Trump’s agenda.”
The Internet Made Donald Trump: Liberal democracies must fight back against social media, or perish, Will Stancil, Zeteo, 1/21/25: “The true villains of modern history may be the social media overlords – Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, above all – who have stripped away any fetters on far-right lies and demagoguery.”
Harris was Right: We Need to Hear from Her: We need a real law-and-order advocate to denounce Trump’s lawlessness, Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian, 1/22/25: “Trump has launched a full-out assault on the Constitution and the rule of law.”
Twenty Lessons On Tyranny: From the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 1/20/25 (#20): “Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.”
Don't Let Bishop Budde Stand Alone: A Challenge to Every Minister in America, John Pavlovitz, The Beautiful Mess, 1/13/25: “…greatest fear is that she will be the only one of her kind; that in a few days she will prove to be an outlier, just a beautiful aberration.”
When you’re brought to your knees,
sing a song of praise.
When you’re gutted,
embrace the whorl. FTW.
There’s nothing like it.
—from “Disassociadelic,” Peter Gizzi (in Fierce Elegy)
Science, Environment
High fertiliser use halves numbers of pollinators, world’s longest study finds: Even average use of nitrogen fertilisers cut flower numbers fivefold and halved pollinating insects, Phoebe Weston, The Guardian, 1/20/25
As Oceans Warm, Predators Are Falling Out of Sync with Their Prey: In the sea as on land, climate change is driving shifts in the abundance and distribution of species. Scientists are just beginning to focus on why some fish predators and prey — like striped bass and menhaden on the U.S. East Coast — are changing their behavior as waters warm, Andrew S. Lewis, Yale Environment 360, 1/21/25
‘Catastrophic’: Great Barrier Reef hit by its most widespread coral bleaching, study finds: More than 40% of individual corals monitored around One Tree Island reef bleached by heat stress and damaged by flesh-eating disease, Graham Readfearn, The Guardian, 1/21/25
Mother Load: Microplastics and the new wilderness, Sara Michas-Martin, Orion, 1/21/25: “The average person consumes five grams of microplastic a week. That is equal to the weight of five paper clips, or one sharpened number two pencil, one hundred and fifty-four staples, half a poker chip, or an entire credit card.”
Cement has an emissions problem. Can tech that mimics coral fix it? Fortera’s low-carbon cement, based on the process by which corals form their skeletons, is gaining traction as the essential industry looks to curb emissions, Isobel Whitcomb, Canary Media, 1/21/25
The L.A. fires are just the beginning of a crisis spreading across the country: Widespread shifts in home building and insurance coverage are coming, Heather Long, Washington Post, 1/22/25
New evidence links heavy metal pollution with wildfire retardants: “The chemical black box” that blankets wildfire-impacted areas is increasingly under scrutiny, Maria Paula Rubiano A, Daily Climate, 1/23/25
In Our New Climate Reality, There Is No Getting Back to Normal: The media is failing to warn us about the scale of the disasters that lie ahead. In Los Angeles, as everywhere, we need more than liberal technocratic tweaks, Wen Stephenson, The Nation, 1/21/25: “As if this “new normal” of climate extremes isn’t itself a fleeting moment on the fossil-fueled way to uninhabitability.”
Toads on the Roads: South Africa is the only place in the world where the endangered western leopard toad can be found. Can locals learn to coexist with—and conserve—their vulnerable amphibian neighbors? Sophie Hartley, BioGraphic, 1/23/25
Bacteria found to eat forever chemicals -- and even some of their toxic byproducts, Univ Buffalo, ScienceDaily, 1/23/25: “A team has identified a strain of bacteria that can break down and transform at least three types of PFAS, and, perhaps even more crucially, some of the toxic byproducts of the bond-breaking process.”
Scientists discover unique microbes in Amazonian peatlands that could influence climate change: Study underscores the urgent need to protect global tropical wetlands from human impact, Ariz State Univ, ScienceDaily, 1/24/25: “The new research shows these microbes have a dual role in the carbon cycle and the potential to either moderate or intensify climate change.”
Heat pumps keep widening their lead on gas furnaces: 2024 heat pump sales through November show the clean-heat transition is speeding up in the U.S., Alison F. Takemura, Canary Media, 1/24/25
Scientists Re-Create the Conditions That Sparked Complex Life: Evolution was fueled by endosymbiosis, cellular alliances in which one microbe makes a permanent home inside another. For the first time, biologists made it happen in the lab, Molly Herring, Wired, 1/26/25
Concept Cells Help Your Brain Abstract Information and Build Memories: Individual cells in the brain light up for specific ideas. These concept neurons, once known as “Jennifer Aniston cells,” help us think, imagine and remember episodes from our lives, Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta, 1/21/25
Before bed, I listen to the grasshoppers I catch.
Vibrations of their canto echo like a llanto through my body
reminding me how lonely the field must be without them.
—from “A Note on Solitude,” Saúl Hernández
Health, Wellness
Proof That Our Food Is Filled with Plastic Chemicals: A growing pool of studies finds concerning levels of plastic and forever chemicals in our common food items and their packaging. Here’s what you need to know, Karen Hostetter, Outside, 1/22/25: “Ditch all plastic from your kitchen. Storage containers, colanders, utensils, cereal bowls. Start to replace all of those items with glass, wood, metal, and ceramic.”
Here's what we're getting ourselves into: The appeal to nature fallacy is not a viable healthcare strategy, Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD, Your Local Epidemiologist, 1/21/25: “Infectious diseases are natural, and they kill people. Many antibiotics are “human-made,” and they save countless lives. Tobacco is natural but not good for us. And vilifying “human-made” things means vilifying technological advances that genuinely help people, like new drugs to treat cancer.”
This is what might happen if the US withdraws from the WHO: Pulling out will harm the US, as well as global public health, Jessica Hamzelou, MIT Technology Review, 1/23/25: “It’s going to hurt global health. It’s going to come back to bite us.”
Birds, Birding
Chirps and songs can be signs of an ecosystem’s health: As the climate changes, animals are modifying their behavior – and sometimes those changes are easier to hear than to see, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 1/22/25
Largest study of its kind proves 'bird brain' is a misnomer, Flinders Univ, PhysOrg, 1/22/25: “the brains of birds are so large that they are practically a braincase with a beak.”
Miscellaneous
I interviewed author and teacher Jon Wlasiuk about his book, An Alternative History of Cleveland for my podcast series at Writerscast. (also on Apple, Spotify, etc.)
The difference between poetry and rhetoric
is being
ready to kill
yourself
instead of your children
—Audre Lorde
We knew it was coming, but the first week of the second Trump presidency has been so bad, there is so much news to track, it has been overwhelming. Like so many of you who cherish democracy and believe in progressive values, I am trying to decide how best to respond. I will remain committed to sharing what I think matters most. We cannot allow ourselves to be defeated by what is happening. There is still so much we can and must do, all of us together. I believe the communities we make will save us. We must stand up to fascism at every turn. Please send comments here, share resources: participate, lead. We are the people who must do the work of democracy.
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Be well everyone. Stay strong. Keep in touch.
Love the ones you’re with. We need each other more than ever.
Love always—David
The world is dark but it is not hopeless.—Clarence Darrow
Always worthwhile.