The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 245, January 19, 2025 (V5 #37)
We are living apocalyptically.—Bruno Latour
Are there people in LA you love? Then give witness to their life, notice what would help. Don’t ask, just give witness, notice, and love them.—Scott Galloway
Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.—Special Counsel Jack Smith (Read the report here)
Get curious, not furious.—A.J. Jacobs
Books, Music, Art, Culture
See 6 Planets Align on January 21: Alignments of five or more planets are rare—there will be two more featuring five or more planets this year, but after that the next won’t happen until 2040, Gretchen Rundorff, Wired, 1/17/25
How the literature of fire can help readers find hope among the ashes, Grace Moore, The Conversation, 1/17/25: “The historian Stephen J. Pyne has called our fire-prone age the Pyrocene…it’s no surprise that more writers are weaving wildfires into their stories.”
How Los Angeles Created the Vocabulary of Its Destruction: The burning of large areas in the city suggests the dusk of America as a dream manufacturer, and the beginnings of a darker story, Ed Simon, HyperAllergic, 1/13/25: “this is symbolic of what’s coming to all America.”
Bob Uecker, announcer who was the comic bard of baseball, dies at 90: He had a mediocre career as a player, but found fame as a comic actor and Hall of Fame broadcaster, Matt Schudel, Washington Post, 1/17/25
RIP David Lynch: Iconic, Singular Filmmaker Dies at 78, Jim Vorel, Paste, 1/16/25: “There are no doubt many directors in Hollywood who would aspire to be referred to as “singular,” but there’s no one who earned the term in quite the same way as David Lynch.”
How the biggest rock band in the world disappeared, Will Leitch, Washington Post, 1/15/25: “the skill in attending a party is knowing when it’s time to leave. We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we’re going to walk away from it.”
The baseball – and Hollywood – star who’s been lost to history, Anthony Castrovince, MLB.com, 1/18/25: “Virtually every kid in the first part of the 20th century knew who Mike Donlin was.” Book: Mike Donlin: A Rough and Rowdy Life from New York Baseball Idol to Stage and Screen
A Media Collapse Long in the Making: This wasn't overnight, Charlotte Clymer, Web Thoughts, 1/18/25: “…political media get things wrong on a fairly regular basis—often, it would seem, to preserve professional relationships and access…isn’t the whole point of journalism to speak truth to power and inform the public?”
Take That, China: Our Dumbest Young People Are Invading Your App: YOU deal with them for a while, Jeff Maurer, I Might Be Wrong, 1/17/25: “Furious over accusations that they’re being manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party, some Americans have jumped to a Chinese-owned, Chinese-language app named after a book of Mao’s quotations. Which would be like responding to accusations that you’re in the mafia by sending two guys in tracksuits to beat the accuser with pipes.”
TikTok is just the beginning: The free world is being tested, and bigger battles lie ahead, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 1/15/25: “…the Chinese government would rather see TikTok destroyed than see it fall into American hands.”
When America’s Top Spies Were Academics and Librarians: How scholars achieved some of the most consequential intelligence victories of the twentieth century, Greg Barnhisel, New Republic, 1/16/25: “the war may have been fought on battlefields, but it was won in libraries.” Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II,
From Ancient Troy to 1990s Tennessee: on Creating an Afterlife For Homer’s Helen: “We’re raising eidolons, real and not-real, tales that move and breathe and stand side by side, speaking Troy into the future,” Maria Zoccola, LitHub, 1/14/25: “Helen had a story to tell, and all I had to do was keep writing until she’d said her piece.” Book: Helen of Troy, 1993
‘I’m literally Joan Baez right now’: gen Z women relate to Bob Dylan’s toxic situationship: The film A Complete Unknown has sparked interest in the folk singers’ doomed romance, and with it the realization that a similar dynamic is ‘happening to girls everywhere,’ Alaina Demopoulos, The Guardian, 1/16/25
When the sun sets, all hell will break loose.
After all, this is the end of world,
The credits are about to scroll on the clouds.
Whoever is left will have to start over —
A new pocket protector for their shirt,
A hunting rifle useless until gunpowder is invented again.
—from “Here We Go Again,” Rick Bursky (in Best American Poetry)
Politics, Economics, Technology
For reality: A few thoughts on the last day of the old world, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 1/19/25: “Now we will, at least for a time, replace justice with power as our guiding light.”
Trump, MAGA, and the Breaking of the American Mind: A Majority of Republicans Say They are A-OK With Trump Suspending the Constitution, Rachel Bitcofer, The Cycle, 1/12/25: “Fact checks are useless because 40 million Republicans were told that the only truth is Trump and Elon. All sources of information that are not from The Party are fake. All data is fake. Welcome to the new world.”
‘Reactionary nihilism’: how a rightwing movement strives to end US democracy, Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian, 1/19/25: “It stands for a kind of unraveling of the American political mind – a madness that now afflicts one side of nearly every political debate. Money, Lies and God exposes a Christian nationalist movement funded by the super-rich seeking to secure their wealth at the expense of others.”
On a Mission From God: Inside the Movement to Redirect Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Private Religious School, Alec MacGillis, ProPublica, 1/13/25 “[in just one] county the voucher expansion is costing schools millions of dollars a year.”
The Memo That Hijacked American Democracy — And How Democrats Can Take It Back: A single memo launched a strategy to control media, courts, and public opinion, reshaping American democracy. To reclaim it, Democrats must build a powerful media and policy network, Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 1/13/25
Jack Smith reminds us of the futility of truth in the Trump era: His final report closes the door on a once-hopeful investigation, Lisa Needham, Public Notice, 1/15/25: “On the one hand, there’s the entire actual foundation of the American rule of law. On the other hand, some hypothetical future president might need some hypothetical bold fearlessness that requires them to commit crimes. Against that twisted logic, Jack Smith — and the American people — never stood a chance.”
Resisting without disengaging, Robert B. Hubbell, Today’s Edition, 1/17/25: “We resist because we do not want to enable a system that supports a man who openly muses about suspending the Constitution and becoming a dictator on his first day in office.”
The Little-Known Group Shaping Trump's Agenda...And no, it's not the authors of Project 2025, Sharon McMahon, The Preamble, 1/14/25: “America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a think tank with its own distinct goals for governance in 2025 and beyond….the group is widely viewed as holding sway in Trump’s orbit.”
The Far Right’s Plan to Force Teachers to Lie About Race: Trump has threatened to defund schools that teach honestly about the history of racism, giving new momentum to the “uncritical race theory” movement, Jesse Hagopian, The Nation, 1/15/25
Kamala Harris Was Poised to Crush the Women’s Vote. What Went Wrong? Once Harris became the nominee, women voters surged behind her. But on Election Day, she won a smaller share of them than Biden did. This is how it fell apart, Joan Walsh, The Nation, 1/14/25: “…the big problem was white women.”
Kamala Harris Paid the Price for Not Breaking With Biden on Gaza, New Poll Shows: Twenty-nine percent of non-voters who supported Biden in 2020 said U.S. support for the genocide was the top reason they sat the 2024 election, according to a survey by YouGov, Ryan Grim, DropSite, 1/15/25
Biden failed to win the working class. Democrats might want to stop trying.: Moving even further to the left won’t bring these voters back, Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post, 1/17/25: “Democratic activists and intellectuals have tried to explain away the failure of post-neoliberal policies with various justifications that strain credulity.”
Joe Biden's tragic presidency: He accomplished a lot — except the most important thing, Stephen Robinson, Public Notice, 1/16/25: “…the GOP’s election denial was about more than just appeasing Trump’s wounded pride. It was a coordinated and successful effort to diminish Biden in the public eye.”
Money’s Control Over Politics has Never Been Greater: Citizens United played a leading role in the Trump victory, Michael Waldman, Brennan Center, 1/14/25: “Historians (if they still have them in the future) will see the 2024 election as a time when absurdly wealthy individuals thrust themselves into political power.”
It’s time for Democrats to go low: Democrats should make the next four years of Republican governance as grueling and painful as possible, Peter Rothpletz, The Guardian, 1/17/25: “Democrats must get over themselves; far too much is at stake.”
Total information collapse: It's started. And it's only going to accelerate from here, Carole Cadwalladr, The Power, 1/13/25: “Steve Bannon who may turn out the most prescient philosopher of our era said you don’t have to prove or disprove anything, you just need to drown the zone in shit.”
Meta Is Laying the Narrative Groundwork for Trump’s Mass Deportations, Joseph Cox, 404 Media, 1/16/25: “ALL behavioral statements (qualified and non-qualified)” are no longer against Meta’s rules…One example was “These damn immigrants can’t be trusted, they’re all criminals.”
Witch Trials and Bathroom Bills: I can't shake this feeling..., Jess Piper, View from Rural Missouri, 1/16/25: “2024 was a record-breaking year for anti-trans legislation. 617 bills were introduced nationwide. Most of these bills are aimed at children…at girls. Bathroom bills. Trans athlete bills. It feels like a witch hunt.”
A Year of Empty Threats and a “Smokescreen” Policy: How the State Department Let Israel Get Away With Horrors in Gaza, Brett Murphy, ProPublica, 1/15/25: ““This is the human rights atrocity of our time.”
A Deadly Apathy: A blank indifference to cruelty and atrocity as a normative mode of waging war has infected Israel’s collective conscience, David Shulman, NY Review of Books, 1/16/25 issue: “What is striking, and horrific, is the fact that Israel has embraced cruelty and atrocity as a normative mode of waging war.”
I know your voice
is a kind of heaven. The truth is
your voice doesn’t exist
—from “Letter to Capitol Hill,” Jennifer Chang
Science, Environment
‘Virtually Any City on Earth Can Burn Now:’ In the superheated 21st century, the old rules for wildfires no longer apply. John Vaillant, author of “Fire Weather,” explains, Kiley Bense, Inside Climate News, 1/17/25
What Happens When a Plastic City Burns: Most modern couches are basically blocks of gasoline, Zoë Schlanger, The Atlantic, 1/15/25: “Plastic is undeniably useful. But it comes with a clear risk. One day, if fire strikes, ‘it will burn faster, and it will burn hotter.’ The advantages will turn to threats.”
The Fire Boom: Mike Davis’s essay on LA as a locus of ecological destruction, taken from his classic work Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster, Mike Davis, Verso, 1/14/25: “The social cost of fire has increased in almost geometric relation to the linear growth of firebelt suburb populations. Two-thirds of all the homes and dwellings destroyed by wildfire since statewide record keeping began in 1923 have been burnt since 1980.” (from 1998!) Mike Davis was a visionary who should be read more widely now.
The Media’s Mega-Failure on LA’s Mega-Fires: Even as the LA fires still burn, most journalism is not representing how the climate crisis is driving increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather, Mark Hertsgaard, Kyle Pope, The Nation, 1/16/25
We Will All Be Paying For L.A.’s Wildfires: Los Angeles’ wildfires and an industry-tied insurance regulator may prove a tipping point for the country’s faltering financial safety net, Lois Parshley, The Lever, 1/14/25
Old trees “remember” plentiful water. Youth with less memory might survive a drier world: An unusual experiment in a Swiss research forest found trees that received lots of water had a more drastic reaction to drought, Warren Cornwall, Anthropocene, 1/15/25
Age of the panzootic: scientists warn of more devastating diseases jumping between species: Experts believe H5N1 bird flu belongs in a growing category of infectious diseases that can cause pandemics across many species. But there are ways to reduce the risks, Phoebe Weston, The Guardian, 1/15/25
How Whales Found Peace in War: A forgotten museum collection reveals how a pause in industrial whaling during World War II changed whales at the molecular level, Giuliana Viglione, BioGraphic, 1/14/25
Prairie dogs are in trouble as the climate warms: The animals are critical to ecosystems in the Great Plains, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 1/13/25: “Much of their habitat has been lost to agriculture, and the southern part of their range is becoming too dry.”
Sweet Yet Versatile: In Praise of the Magnificent Melon: on the Long Journey of a Miraculous Fruit From Central Asia to Western Europe, Caroline Eden, LitHub, 1/17/25: “The traders and farmers of Uzbekistan’s melons know, very well, the true value of these fruits; how the act of really caring for them can, in turn, make us more mindful.” DW note: Buy Amy Goldman’s Melon. Highly recommended!
A Revolutionary Approach to the World’s Protein Problem: Searching for a meat substitute, this Vancouver company found one in the rootlike structure of mushrooms, Inder Nirwan, Pippa Norman, The Tyee, 1/13/25: “It’s arguably the most efficient form of agriculture that will ever exist…”
A secret weapon in agriculture’s climate fight: Ants — yes, ants — could protect apples, nuts, cocoa, and other beloved crops from disease and climate change ,Ayurella Horn-Muller, Grist, 1/13/25: “…for crops from cocoa to citrus, ants could replace insecticides in a multitude of climates and locations, reducing incidences of pear scab in pear trees, coffee leaf rust in coffee shrubs, and leaf fungal attacks in oak seedlings.”
Life on the frontlines of Ontario’s critical mineral boom: The Doug Ford government is pushing for a prospecting rush across northern Ontario, leaving a blanket of mineral claims on land where First Nations are still fighting for title, Emma McIntosh, The Narwhal, 1/16/25: “It’s not just about the mining or Aboriginal title claims. It’s about the health and well-being of the environment, the health and well-being of the land, the animals, the fish, all of that…That’s what we’re fighting for.”
Women-centered Celtic society unearthed in 2,000-year-old cemetery: DNA analysis indicates that a Celtic tribe in Iron Age Britain was matrilocal, meaning men relocated to live with women’s families, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Washington Post, 1/15/25
Can AI Models Show Us How People Learn? Impossible Languages Point a Way: Certain grammatical rules never appear in any known language. By constructing artificial languages that have these rules, linguists can use neural networks to explore how people learn, Ben Brubaker, Quanta, 1/13/25
Wastewater treatment plants fail to remove most toxic PFAS from drinking water sources, Katherine McMahon, Sarah Howard, Environmental Health News, 1/17/25
This tiny galaxy is answering some big questions: Patterns of star formation in Leo P, Rutgers Univ, ScienceDaily, 1/16/25: “Leo P provides a unique laboratory to explore the early evolution of a low-mass galaxy in detail.”
Faith
Buddha closes his eyes
to the wind and fire
Inside the temple
a drop of water
Miho Kinnas & E. Ethelbert Miller
Health, Wellness
15 science-based ways to reduce your risk of dementia: From diet and exercise to protecting against hearing loss and maintaining social connections, there are ways to improve our health and reduce dementia risk, experts say, Marlene Cimons, Washington Post, 1/13/25: “There is no cure, and it can’t be prevented. But you can reduce your risk.”
Processed meats don’t just affect your heart. They may worsen cognition, too.: A large new study is among the first to suggest a link between cured meats and higher rates of dementia and worse cognition, Anahad O’Connor, Washington Post, 1/15/25
On fewer days I agree
with the poet's dread of being
the wrong person in the right world, and believe
in adhesion, in never showing up
empty-handed, even if the pleasure I know best
is fused with the abject. There is always
the other side of the heart, its coaxing:
You are here. You can begin again. You can rise.
—from “Pleasure,” Rick Barot
Birds, Birding
LA’s Hummingbird Rescuer Explains How the Wildfires Impacted the “Fastest Things on Wings:” Terry Masear, star of the new documentary Every Little Thing, has been fielding many calls about the birds, but says not to worry—most will be okay. It's the callers who are hurting, Anthony Breznican, Vanity Fair, 1/16/25: “ I think they’re doing all right. They’re survivors.”
Animals in the Aftermath: North Carolina’s Forests and Migratory Birds After Helene, Tracy Davids, Defenders of Wildlife, 1/14/25: “In general, when migratory birds’ breeding habitat is destroyed, the birds must search for a new, suitable nesting area. This will likely lead to a decrease in reproductive success and overall population declines.”
Miscellaneous+News of Today
Israel and Hamas ceasefire goes into effect today.
Tiktok goes dark (probably just until Trump decides he will save it)
And then there’s tomorrow. Good luck to us all.
Buy an Artwork to Support Victims of LA Fires: Artists and galleries are stepping up to help meet the massive demand for recovery aid, Isa Farfan, Hyperallergic, 1/14/25. Click the article link to see a complete list.
NY Loves LA T-shirt: Kingsland Editions is selling a $50 T-shirt design featuring “New York” and “Los Angeles” sandwiching a massive red heart. Proceeds will go toward the Mutual Aid LA Network. You can order a shirt here.
LA Strong: Mutual Aid L.A.’s list of resources for those affected by the fires and opportunities to help
We can open the door to the light.—Timothy Snyder
The Weird Times reflects my weekly attempt to collect and share what seems most important or useful for us to know about. If you find this newsletter useful, do share it with friends, family, and colleagues. It will always be free!
Please don’t let the news defeat you. There is still so much we can and must do, all of us together. The communities we make will get us through all of this.
Be well everyone. Stay strong. Love the ones you’re with.
Love always—David