The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 70, September 12, 2021 (V2 #18)
"If my work does nothing else, when I get to the end of my life, I want Native peoples to be seen as human beings," — Joy Harjo
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H.L. Mencken
“Those of us back here in reality must work together to enact a Gentle Awakening for our friends and loved ones who have gotten addicted to this video game. There is no man behind the curtain, no secret cabal controlling our destinies, no marvelous or nefarious plan driving Covid, vote counting, or global affairs. They need to awaken to something way way more frightening than politicians eating children: shit just happens, no one is in charge, and chaos reigns. There really is no scapegoat —never was. The only way through is to find ways of coming together, instead.”—Douglas Rushkoff
“Sept. 11, 2001 was when the Big Lie was born. Or should we say, Big Lies, because they came fast and furious. By now they are known to be so completely without any basis in reality, so wholly bogus, that they hardly bear recounting.”—Lucian Truscott IV
“There’s a popular conception that gerrymandering makes polarization worse. I would reverse that and say that polarization makes gerrymandering worse, because the higher the stakes of elections, the more willing folks are to get the most out of redistricting.”—Lee Drutman
Trump’s Long Campaign to Steal the Presidency: A Timeline: The insurrection was a complex, yearslong plot, not a one-day event. And it isn’t over, Ed Kilgore, NY Intelligencer, 9/5/21
“If you begin not with the assumption that Trump’s entire effort to steal the election was absurd but regard it as an audacious plan that wasn’t executed with the necessary precision, then reverse engineering it to fix the broken parts makes sense …
And the really heady thing for Trump is knowing how easy it was to convince the GOP rank-and-file base that his lies were the gospel truth.
Put together shrewd vote suppressors, audacious state legislators, emboldened conservative media, a better slate of lawyers, a new generation of compliant judges, and quite possibly a Republican-controlled Congress, and the insurrection plot could finally succeed.”
That pesky climate change just won’t leave us alone
When the Climate Crisis Becomes Unignorable: This summer’s weather has forced a kind of continuous awareness of climate change, Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, 9/7/21
We should take comfort in the fact that New Orleans’s levees, floodgates, and flood walls—constructed at a cost of $14 billion by the federal government—held. That is, it is possible to protect people against the nightmarish atmosphere, but it will require billions of dollars of investment and retrenchment. In the next few weeks, Congress will decide whether to pass President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion infrastructure package, which would become the most significant American climate mitigation and adaptation law ever passed.
During Rosh Hashanah, rabbi calls on Jews to commit to climate action: She says the Jewish New Year offers an opportunity for renewal and change,YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 9/6/21
“We say on that day, ‘Hayom harat olam. This day is the birthday of the world.’ … And we recognize the possibility of rebirth and renewal, not only for the Earth, but really for all of us as individuals and for us as a human community.”
Study: The public is pretty confused by your climate change jargon: Carbon neutral? Mitigation? People don't know the words scientists think they do, Kate Yoder/Matthew Craft, Grist, 9/1/21
“Some of the people in our study were really concerned about climate change,” said Wändi Bruine de Bruin, a professor of psychology and behavioral science at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy. “If they don’t understand what you’re trying to tell them, you could be missing an opportunity to make a difference.”
Climate Activists Are Hauling Solar Tech to New Orleans to Help Restore Power: The Fortune 500 company Entergy claimed its new natural gas-fueled plant would be able to power the city following a hurricane like Ida, but it’s still unclear when the blackouts will end, Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone, 9/3/21
“In this vacuum, a coalition of climate activists are maneuvering to temporarily bring approximately $1 million worth of solar equipment to the region to both immediately aid relief efforts and hopefully lay the groundwork for the kind of greener New Orleans Entergy has previously tried to stifle.”
‘No point in anything else’: Gen Z members flock to climate careers: Colleges offer support as young people aim to devote their lives to battling the crisis, Angela Lashbrook, The Guardian, 9/6/21
“Once you learn how damaged the world’s ecosystems are, it’s not really something you can unsee,” says Rachel Larrivee, 23, a sustainability consultant based in Boston. “To me, there’s no point in pursuing a career – or life for that matter – in any other area.”
Los Alamos lab working on hydrogen-powered truck project, Scott Wyland, Santa Fe New Mexican, 9/5/21
“The project is dubbed “the million-mile fuel cell truck,” with the goal of developing a technology that can be marketed to the industry in the not-so-distant future.”
From a nuisance to a benefit, ‘world’s worst weed’ finds new use as biofuel, Frederica Marsi, MongaBay, 9/6/21
“A startup in western Kenya has developed a process of making bioethanol from water hyacinths, addressing both the need for a clean fuel alternative to charcoal and fuelwood, and the spread of the invasive hyacinths.
Proponents say a key advantage of this “second-generation” bioethanol over traditional feedstocks such as sugarcane and corn is that it avoids competition for limited agricultural land.”
These popular tuna species are no longer endangered, surprising scientists: From fish to Komodo dragons, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has updated its list of the world’s most endangered species, Jason Bittel, National Geographic, 9/6/21
“In a world simultaneously on fire and underwater thanks to climate change, scientists have announced some good news: Several important tuna species have stepped back from the edge of extinction.”
Young activist works to shut down oil drilling across Los Angeles: Nearly 600,000 people in LA County live within a quarter mile of an active oil or gas well, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 9/7/21
“Nearly 600,000 people in Los Angeles County live within a quarter mile of an active oil or gas well.”
Farming Without a Net: California’s sustainable farms offer lessons in climate resilience, but the agricultural system still favors industrial operations, Liza Gross, Inside Climate News, 9/7/21
“Small-scale sustainable farmers with direct access to consumers through community-supported agriculture, or CSA, programs hold the key to boosting agricultural resilience in the face of a warming world. They know how to reduce agriculture’s carbon emissions, curb water and air pollution and boost biodiversity. But economic incentives and policies still favor large industrial farms that rely on chemicals and fossil fuels and raise only a few types of livestock or crops.”
Majority of voters want fracking in Pennsylvania to end, says poll, Ryan Deto, Pittsburgh City Paper, 9/8/21
“By a margin of 56% to 35%, Pennsylvania voters believe that cities, municipalities, and counties should be able to protect people from fracking if local voters choose to do so.”
Packaging generates a lot of waste – now Maine and Oregon want manufacturers to foot the bill for getting rid of it, Jessica Heiges/Kate O’Neill, The Conversation, 9/8/21
“Now, Maine and Oregon have enacted the first state laws making companies that create consumer packaging, such as cardboard cartons, plastic wrap and food containers, responsible for the recycling and disposal of those products, too….
The Maine and Oregon laws are the latest applications of a concept called extended producer responsibility, or EPR. Swedish academic Thomas Lindhqvist framed this idea in 1990 as a strategy to decrease products’ environmental impacts by making manufacturers responsible for the goods’ entire life cycles – especially for takeback, recycling and final disposal.”
Scienciana
Can you spot the fake receptor? The coronavirus can’t either. As researchers search for new ways to treat covid-19, some scientists are making decoy receptors to lure the virus away from our cells, Tatyana Woodall, MIT Technology Review, 8/27/21
“As covid-19 continues to evolve in the US, researchers are now developing the next generation of therapeutics, including a new approach that could help reduce the time it takes to recover from the disease.
While existing treatments include antivirals, antibodies, and steroids, scientists in the US and Europe are now focusing on creating decoys of the receptors the virus normally binds to, potentially neutralizing its harmful effects.”
mRNA cancer therapy now in human trials after shrinking mouse tumours, Alice Klein, New Scientist, 9/8/21
“A cancer treatment that uses messenger RNA to launch an immune attack on cancer cells can completely shrink tumours in mice and is now being tested in people.
Messenger RNAs – or mRNAs – are molecules that instruct cells to make proteins. They have risen to fame with the roll out of mRNA covid-19 vaccines.”
Face masks for COVID pass their largest test yet: A rigorous study finds that surgical masks are highly protective, but cloth masks fall short, Lynne Peeples, Nature, 9/9/21
“The study linked surgical masks with an 11% drop in risk, compared with a 5% drop for cloth. That finding was reinforced by laboratory experiments whose results are summarized in the same preprint. The data show that even after 10 washes, surgical masks filter out 76% of small particles capable of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2, says Mushfiq Mobarak, an economist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and a co-author of the study. By contrast, the team found that 3-layered cloth masks had a filtration efficiency of only 37% before washing or use.”
Lithium-ion batteries just made a big leap in a tiny product: Sila’s novel anode materials packed far more energy into a new Whoop fitness wearable. The company hopes to do the same soon for electric vehicles, James Temple, MIT Technology Review, 9/8/21
“For the transportation sector, a more energy-dense battery can reduce the costs or extend the range of electric vehicles, addressing two of the biggest issues that have discouraged consumers from giving up their gas guzzlers. It also promises to deliver grid batteries that can save up more energy from solar and wind farms, or consumer gadgets that last longer between charges.”
Solar Startup Born in a Garage Is Beating China to Cheaper Panels: Australia-based SunDrive has made a materials breakthrough that promises to increase the efficiency and lower the cost of solar panels, Ashlee Vance, Bloomberg, 9/8/21
“If SunDrive can mass produce its technology — and that’s a big if — the Australian startup could reduce the cost of solar panels and make the industry far less dependent on silver. “The thing about copper is that it’s very abundant and usually about 100 times cheaper than silver.””
Massive numbers of new COVID–19 infections, not vaccines, are the main driver of new coronavirus variants, Vaughn Cooper, The Conversation, 9/9/21
“The world has already witnessed the relationship between the number of infections and the rise of mutants. The coronavirus remained essentially unchanged for months until the pandemic got out of control. With relatively few infections, the genetic code had limited opportunities to mutate. But as infection clusters exploded, the virus rolled the dice millions of times and some mutations produced fitter mutants. The best way to stop new variants is to stop their spread, and the answer to that is vaccination.”
MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy: New superconducting magnet breaks magnetic field strength records, paving the way for practical, commercial, carbon-free power, David Chandler, MIT News, 9/8/21
“That advance paves the way, they say, for the long-sought creation of practical, inexpensive, carbon-free power plants that could make a major contribution to limiting the effects of global climate change.”
In Missouri, a Human 'Bee' Works to Better Understand Climate Change's Effects, Shahla Farzan, Scientific American, 9/8/21
Some crops can thrive in shade of solar panels, experiments suggest: Farmers in hot, dry climates might be able to produce food and electricity on the same plot of land, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 9/9/21
Tropical Climate Change Is a Puzzle—Could Aerosols Be a Piece? The eastern tropical Pacific Ocean hasn’t warmed as much as climate change models projected. A new study shows that aerosols in the atmosphere could be responsible, Andrew Chapman, Eos, 9/9/21
Predicting possible Alzheimer’s with nearly 100 percent accuracy, Kaunas University of Technology, Science Daily, 9/3/21
Exclusive: Alzheimer’s could be ‘halted’ using oxygen therapy: Patients suffering pre-dementia have improved memory and brain function following sessions in hyperbaric chamber, research finds, Sarah Knapton, The Telegraph, 9/9/21
NHS lung cancer patients to get Sotorasib, a revolutionary drug that stops tumours growing, Kat Lay, The Times, 9/10/21
Advocates call for lights out as 32 million migrating birds expected to fly over Illinois Wednesday and Thursday night, Tatyana Turner, Chicago Tribune, 9/8/21
‘He has adapted’: Bruce the disabled New Zealand parrot uses tools for preening: Alpine Kea with damaged beak teaches himself to use pebbles for grooming, in a first under scientific observation, Eva Corlett, The Guardian, 9/10/21
Kult-cher, Politicks, Lifesongs
As the banks fade dimmer away,
As the stars come out, and the night-wind
Brings up the stream
Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.
— from “The Future,” Matthew Arnold
OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE ARE SHOCKED —TikTok is gaining on YouTube, now leads in average watch time in the US. YouTube still has more users, but each TikTok viewer watches more video, Ron Amodeo, Ars Technica, 9/7/21
“A new report from the BBC says that TikTok has overtaken YouTube in average watch time per user in the US and UK. While YouTube is still the bigger video site in terms of users and total video watched, the average US TikTok user watches more video than the average US YouTube viewer. The youths are addicted.”
One Woman’s Mission to Rewrite Nazi History on Wikipedia: Ksenia Coffman’s fellow editors have called her a vandal and a McCarthyist. She just wants them to stop glorifying fascists—and start citing better sources, Noam Cohen, Wired, 9/7/21
“Why perpetuate misinformation when it can be removed, or give legitimacy to glorification while there are already plenty of sites that do that? I believe Wikipedia’s standards to be higher.”
Ed. Note: The Reddit Herman Cain Award page is sobering, yet strangely wonderful to read.
Bret Stephens is the worst NY Times columnist in history, Lucian Truscott IV, Lucian Truscott Newsletter, 9/8/21
“Stephens has the gall to talk about Joe Biden as if the reign of the demagogue never happened. “The last few months have told us something worrying about this president,” Stephens concludes. “He’s proud, inflexible, and thinks he’s much smarter than he really is.”
Really, Bret? Are you sure you’re not talking about another “failed presidency” in a column you “failed” to write but should have written during your time behind the keyboard over the last four years?”
Treating billionaire hedge fund managers like everyone else, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 9/9/21
“A study released Wednesday by the Treasury Department details the "tax gap" — the difference between how much Americans pay in taxes and how much they owe. Overall, the tax gap amounts to $600 billion each year. The top 1% of earners alone skip out on $163 billion in taxes annually. The rich can get away with it because the IRS is understaffed and under-resourced. In recent years, the IRS has devoted a large percentage of its audits on very low-wage workers.
"Today’s tax code contains two sets of rules: one for regular wage and salary workers who report virtually all the income they earn; and another for wealthy taxpayers, who are often able to avoid a large share of the taxes they owe," the study concludes.”
(Ed. Note: Why does this fact not make more people mad enough to vote? Maybe because neither party will do anything about it.)
"Not For The Old Lady In Dubuque" Read The Original Vision For The New Yorker, Meredith Mann, Gothamist, 9/7/21
“The New Yorker prospectus represents the birth of an influential and quintessentially New York publication, a treasure of journalistic history. That’s why it is one of the over 250 items that will be on display as part of the Library’s permanent Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures, opening Friday, September 24th, 2021. The exhibition includes objects spanning 4,000 years from the Library's research collections.”
Falling in Love with Instant Anonymity: How I Became a Perpetual Student of LA, Maria Amparo Escandon, Lithub, 9/7/21
“As a child I had visited Disneyland with my parents, but walking around downtown in the first few days after my arrival, I knew I was in a completely different Los Angeles. Here I was in a city that didn’t care who I was or where I’d come from. I felt light without the weight of my history, away from the condescending eye of my relatives who’d say to me when they learned I wanted to be a writer, “You’re so bohemian.” In LA I could become who I wanted and create my own story, enveloped by a shawl of anonymity.”
Read It and Weep: Margaret Atwood on the Intimidating, Haunting Intellect of Simone de Beauvoir: On the French Existentialist's Never-Before-Published Novel, Margaret Atwood, Lithub, 9/8/21
“Read it and weep, Dear Reader. The author herself weeps at the outset: this is how the story begins, with tears. It seems that, despite her forbidding exterior, Beauvoir never stopped weeping for the lost Zaza. Perhaps she herself worked so hard to become who she was as a sort of memorial: Beauvoir must express herself to the utmost, because Zaza could not.”
Explaining the Last Twenty Years, Mark Hurst, Creative Good, 9/9/21
“America today is blanketed by surveillance in ways that would have been unthinkable in 2001. Albert Fox Cahn writes in Wired today that 20 Years After 9/11, Surveillance Has Become a Way of Life: just in New York City, tens of thousands of cameras record citizens moment-to-moment, then share the footage with police and Big Tech for further processing. As for the police, the NYT reported yesterday that the N.Y.P.D. Is Using Post-9/11 Tools on Everyday New Yorkers, deploying battlefield tactics like drone surveillance on constitutionally protected protests.”
The Link Between Texas’s New Abortion Law and Its New Voting Laws: For decades, Republican strategists have seen exploiting both issues as a way to hang on to power, Sue Halpern, New Yorker, 9/3/21
“It is undeniable that there are sincere people with a deeply held belief in the sanctity of life, which, for them, overrides a woman’s right to control her own body, but that is not the motivation of the authors of S.B. 8. If it were, we would see those legislators apply the same standard to gun control, abolition of the death penalty, enforcement of public-health mandates, and a commitment to the social welfare of children, especially children born into poverty. Instead, those legislators appeal to “the right to life” in the same way that they invoke the term “voter fraud”—in order to consolidate their power and pursue an anti-democratic agenda.”
18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic – a retrospective in 7 charts, Katelyn Jetelina, The Conversation, 9/10/21
“Every epidemic curve comes down. And this one will too. But even after it comes down, the pandemic will still be far from over.”
Online Trolls Actually Just Assholes All the Time, Study Finds: New research indicates the internet doesn't make people act like jerks, but it sure gives the jerks a big megaphone, Tom McKay, Gizmodo, 8/27/21
“…their data pointed to online interactions largely mirroring offline behavior, with people predisposed to aggressive, status-seeking behavior just as unpleasant in person as behind a veil of online anonymity, and choosing to be jerks as part of a deliberate strategy rather than as a consequence of the format involved. They also found some evidence that less hostile people simply aren’t as interested in talking about politics on the internet.”
If This Is Goodbye, Mark Knopfler/Emmy Lou Harris
My famous last words
Could never tell the story
Spinning unheard
In the dark of the sky
But I love you
And this is our glory
If this is goodbye
If this is goodbye — Mark Knopfler
Happy birthday Michael Ondaatje, Stanislaw Lem and H.L. Mencken.
After 9/11, the U.S. Got Almost Everything Wrong: A mission to rid the world of “terror” and “evil” led America in tragic directions, Garrett M. Graff, The Atlantic, 9/8/21
“The events of September 11, 2001, became the hinge on which all of recent American history would turn, rewriting global alliances, reorganizing the U.S. government, and even changing the feel of daily life, as security checkpoints and magnetometers proliferated inside buildings and protective bollards sprouted like kudzu along America’s streets. …
As we approach the 20th anniversary of 9/11 on Saturday, I cannot escape this sad conclusion: The United States—as both a government and a nation—got nearly everything about our response wrong, on the big issues and the little ones.”
All this week we got to hear about 9/11, recountings of memories and stories of that day, sadness, sorrow, and the years that followed. I certainly have my own memories and stories, but I find myself thinking about how GW Bush and his cronies did so much damage to our society, starting with their theft of the 2000 election – it’s funny, but not in a laughing way, to realize that Roger Stone played a crucial role in that episode. And it’s funny, but not in a laughing way, that the Bushes now get a free pass because Trump was such a terrible coda to what they unleashed, yet the Bushes are among the biggest thieves and con artists in American history.
(I talked to Russ Baker about his still useful Bush expose Family of Secrets on Writerscast back in 2009).
Covid and climate change continue as the backdrop to our daily lives, along with fear, trepidation, uncertainty, and all the political shit piled on top of it. But I refuse to concede hope and the deep belief that we can make a difference.
oh, it is all one, together, it is all divided, open
never to be repeated, always to be eaten,
swallowed whole.
— Margarett Randall, from “So Many Rooms Has a House But One Roof”
Stay well all, stay strong. Breathe. Love the ones you’re with.