The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 205, April 14, 2024 (V4 #49)
What makes hope a virtue is not its ability to promote happiness and success but its commitment to a greater good beyond the self.—Kendra Thomas
Take the time to stop and be the flowers.—Albert Hoffman, discoverer of LSD
If you're not pretty much always half-confused, most likely you're not thinking deeply enough.—Rob Brezsny
Books, Art, Music, Culture
Frescoes buried by volcano uncovered in ancient dining room in Pompeii, Victoria Bisset, Washington Post, 4/12/24
A few final words from the incomparable Linda Hirshman: The influential feminist and author left me a moving essay about her last days, Margaret Sullivan, American Crisis, 4/10/24: “I want my friends and relatives to remember me, if they do, as still sentient and properly dressed. So I’m getting dressed and saying good bye.”
Octavia Butler, Audre Lorde, and the Power of Pleasure: In three of her stranger works, Butler asks us to interrogate the nature of pleasure, and the relationships and connections made possible through desire, Logan Dreher, Reactor, 4/8/24: “As Audre Lorde says in her 1978 essay on the power of the erotic, ‘we have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings.’”
It crawled from below 50 years ago: how the global Dungeons & Dragons empire began in a basement: The fantasy tabletop role-playing game was conceived of by friends at the heart of Wisconsin’s gaming community, and has evolved to become a global phenomenon, Keith Stuart, The Guardian, 4/11/24
How Deregulation Destroyed Indie Rock Across America: on the Corporate Capture of Regional Radio Stations, Tom Maxwell, LitHub, 4/12/24: “The act…became a checkered flag for a small number of corporations to snap up commercial radio stations across the country and homogenize playlists.”
Maggie Rogers’s Journey from Viral Fame to Religious Studies: The singer-songwriter’s sudden celebrity made her a kind of minister without training. So she went and got some, Amanda Petrusich, New Yorker, 4/8/24: “I had all these moments in the early years where I felt really alone. I was putting so much of it onto one leg. Now it’s a tripod, and it’s so much more sturdy.” DW: If you have not listened to Maggie Rogers, you should.
So close the door and change the channel
Give me something I can handle
A good lover or someone who's nice to me
Take my money, wreck my Sundays
Love me 'til your next somebody
Oh, and promise me that when it's time to leave
Don't forget me
—from “Don’t Forget Me,” Maggie Rogers
How AI could transform baseball forever, Josh Tyrangiel, Washington Post, 4/11/24: “The more human performance improves through AI-driven data, the more important it’ll be to establish ownership of that data.” DW: this article is about much more than baseball, and LLMs have nothing to do with this story. This is the real future of AI unfolding. And includes a meaningful definition of what AI really is about: “AI takes totally different code or data or insights and harmonizes it. Numbers become words. Words can become images. Everything can talk to everything.”
The hidden risk of letting AI decide – losing the skills to choose for ourselves, Joe Árvai, The Conversation, 4/12/24: “AI is mere keystrokes away from making people even less disciplined and skilled when it comes to thoughtful decisions.”
Social Media, Not the Economy, is Harming Teen Mental Health: Here’s the evidence, Jonathan Haidt, Persuasion, 4/12/24: “..we should roll back the phone-based childhood, especially in elementary school and middle school because of the vital importance of protecting kids during early puberty.”
It’s not so ‘terribly strange to be 70,’ Anne Lamott, Washington Post, 4/10/24: “I think that I am only 57, but the paperwork does not back this up. I don’t feel old, because your inside self doesn’t age.”
‘They said I was worse than the Sex Pistols!’: folk legend Linda Thompson on trashing dressing rooms and losing her voice: Her struggles with spasmodic dysphonia has led her to write an album for a bevy of other stars to sing. She talks about trauma, ageing and stealing an audience member’s car, Alexis Petridis, The Guardian, 4/12/24. “Solitary Traveller,” sung by Kami Thompson, written by Linda Thompson.
The Secret History and Unwritten Future of Psychedelics and Technology: An excerpt from this week's Team Human conversation, Douglas Rushkoff, Newsletter, 4/11/24: “What the tech industry can learn from psychedelics, or at least from psychedelic culture, is that the “set and setting” with which you deploy and manifest a technology is going to determine how it works. The current set and setting for the internet is surveillance, control, and exponential growth. We've been living on that particular psychedelic substrate for 35 years. No wonder we're having such a bad trip.”
Book-Ban Campaigns Hit 4,240 Titles Last Year: Here Are the Top 10 Targets: ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ and ‘This Book is Gay’ were on the list, library group says, Joseph De Avila, Wall Street Journal, 4/8/24
“Everywhere I go, nature is where I’m finding my grounding”: An Interview with Ada Limón, Monika Dziamka, Chicago Review of Books, 4/8/24
… A view
of some tree breathing and the mind’s wheels
ease up on the pavement’s tug. That tree,
that one willowy thing over there,
can save a life, you know? It saves
by not trying, a leaf like some note
slipped under the locked blue door
(bathtub full, despair’s drunk),
a small live letter that says only, Stay.—Ada Limon
Politics, Economics, Technology
Inside the Election Denial Groups Planning to Disrupt November: Groups like True the Vote and Michael Flynn’s America Project want to mobilize thousands of Trump supporters by pushing baseless claims about election fraud—and are rolling out new technology to fast-track their efforts, David Gilbert, Wired, 4/8/24
“We Will See How This Goes”: Journalists Prepare to Cover Trump on Trial: For months, reporters, lawyers, and court officials have been negotiating media access to the camera-free proceedings. The historic trial, says one journalist, is sure to be “a physical and mental marathon,” Charlotte Klein, Vanity Fair, 4/12/24: “…it’s the fucking Thunderdome.”
None of This Is Normal: Donald Trump’s 2024 bid is an antidemocratic revenge fantasy being treated like a conventional political campaign, Molly Jong-Fast, Vanity Fair, 4/8/24: “…the media needs to call a lie a lie, and not worry if doing so appears partisan, while making clear that Trump’s authoritarian agenda would mark a radical break from America as we know it. This isn’t just another normal presidential race.”
Democracy Dies at High Noon, Steve Schmidt, The Warning, 4/13/24: “Democracy dies at high noon, and everyone knows when it is dying. There are no secrets in America, and there were no secrets in Germany. The America First movement of the 1930s was amoral and wrong. The America First movement of the 2020s is amoral and wrong.”
Republicans want to use an 1873 law to ban abortion. Congress must repeal it: Democrats have a chance to corner Republicans on an unpopular issue – and defend a modern and egalitarian society, Moira Donegan, The Guardian, 4/8/24: “This election cycle, Democrats must take the obvious stand, and do what is right both in terms of politics and in terms of policy: they must call, en masse, for the repeal of the Comstock Act. Anything less would be political malpractice.”
A Trump headline that stunned me: And began to change my mind about how the media should cover his unhinged rallies and speeches, Margaret Sullivan, American Crisis, 4/8/24: “Journalists rightly chose not to broadcast Trump’s entire speeches after 2016, believing that the free coverage helped boost the former president and spread lies unchecked. But now there’s the possibility that stories about his speeches often make his ideas appear more cogent than they are – making the case that, this time around, people should hear the full speeches to understand how Trump would govern again.”
White Rural Rage: The Secret Political Force Shaping America's Future: Is the GOP’s cynical manipulation of religion, gender, and race enough to keep them voting to hurt themselves and enrich Republican fat-cats? Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 4/8/24: “The authors of new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy point out that rural whites are measurably more bigoted and xenophobic than suburban or urban voters, 13 points more likely to hate on queer people, 15 points more likely to support Trump’s Muslim ban.”
The Republican War on Women is Straight Out of the Authoritarian Playbook: Shaming Women and Denying their Personhood by Removing Reproductive Rights Has a Long History, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, 4/11/24: “In an authoritarian state, women are as much the enemies of the strongman as the press, prosecutors, and the opposition.”
Trump Cornered Like the Feral Beast He Is In the Abortion Crisis of His Own Making, Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, 4/12/24: “To paraphrase Taylor Swift: It’s them. They’re the problem. Or as the Biden campaign’s new tag line put it: Donald Trump did this.”
‘Whole Thing Is an Epic Fraud’: RFK Jr. Official Admits Goal Is to Elect Trump: “As the saying goes, when people show you who they are, believe them,” said a Democratic National Committee spokesperson, Julia Conley, Common Dreams, 4/8/24: “RFK Jr.'s campaign isn't building a plan or a strategy to get 270 electoral votes, they're building one to help Trump return to the Oval Office.”
Why Are We Letting Greedheads and Ideologues Kill Our Post Office? Jim Hightower, Lowdown, 4/11/24: “Their scheme is to shrivel service, foment public dissatisfaction with the agency, demand evermore cuts in staff and branches – then push for a corporate takeover and downsizing of this universal, nationwide delivery network. It’s not just a piece of government they’re trying to eliminate, it’s the core idea of America itself, namely our people’s can-do democratic spirit and commitment to the Common Good.”
Electrifying Democracy in Rural America: For this energy policy expert, rural electric co-ops empower communities and strengthen democracy, Joel Bleifuss, Justin Perkins, Barn Raiser, 4/10/24: “The biggest problem is that rural America has faced underinvestment and disinvestment for so long.”
The Americans Who Long for Caesar: The new right views strongman rule as the medicine for our times. Here's why they're wrong, Jeffrey Tyler Syck, Persuasion, 4/10/24: “The reason despotic rule of one man does not work is simple enough: such an arrangement is inimical to law and liberty, the twin foundations of a healthy civilization.”
We Need a Democratic Revolution to Overcome the Rightwing Media Machine! Autocrats & fascists, know the importance of media ownership (Hitler &Mussolini also took over radio & newspapers during their time). Why this simple lesson is lost on progressives is confounding...Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 4/12/24
Petition Demanding Clarence Thomas Recuse From Trump Immunity Case Nears 200K Goal: “Corruption on the Supreme Court has gotten out of control, and Justice Thomas is the poster child,” Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, 4/12/24
Americans are still not worried enough about the risk of world war: In which I try to be Gandalf instead of Cassandra, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 4/10/24: “So if you were living at any point in 1931 through 1940, you would already be witnessing conflicts that would eventually turn into the bloodiest, most cataclysmic war that humanity has yet known — but you might not realize it. You would be standing in the foothills of the Second World War, but unless you were able to make far-sighted predictions you wouldn’t know what horrors lurked in the near future.”
Gaza Six Months On, Lawrence Freedman, Comment is Freed, 4/11/24: “Hamas, has been severely depleted, the humanitarian situation in Gaza has got progressively worse, and Israel’s main international supporters, especially the US, have become increasingly impatient with Netanyahu.”
After Iran’s attack on Israel, the world must act: this is a crisis that threatens us all: Netanyahu wanted a wider conflict, and Tehran has walked into his trap. The major powers must immediately head this off, Simon Tisdale, The Guardian, 4/14/24: “Of the parties to this conflict, no one country or leader is in the right. In fact all, to varying degrees, are in the wrong. All require saving from themselves. The alternative is more bloodshed, more endless, pointless, spreading misery.”
An Appeal to Congress: Please read, share, and act, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 4/11/24: “If we do not help Ukraine now, we lose all the things that Ukrainians have won for all of us these last two years. The world changes in a way that tips the balance to the tyrants and the aggressors. This is laid out in the appeal, published by CNN.”
Science, Environment
Climate scientists experiment with connecting people in the present with people in the future: A new study describes the shape of intergenerational altruism, and suggests a simple way to activate it—at least among half the population, Sarah DeWeerdt, Anthropocene, 4/9/24: “Just thinking about future generations can make people more willing to make sacrifices on their behalf, according to a new study.”
How to spot five of the fossil fuel industry’s biggest disinformation tactics, Amy Westerveldt, Kyle Pope, The Guardian, 4/14/24: “…telling the story, and understanding it, has never been more urgent with half of Earth’s population eligible to vote in elections that could decisively impact the world’s ability to act in time to stave off the worst of the climate crisis.”
Can Green Hydrogen Production Help Bring Oceanic Dead Zones Back to Life? Green hydrogen production makes a lot of extra oxygen. Could we put it to work revitalizing the ocean? Brian Owens, Hakai, 4/8/24: “As the world warms, the oceans are losing their oxygen.”
By the numbers: Sometimes we need to stop and take stock, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 4/10/24: “It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has.”
The Flooding Will Come “No Matter What:” The complex, contradictory and heartbreaking process of American climate migration is underway, Abraham Lustgarten, ProPublica, 4/11/24: “People have always moved as their environment has changed. But today, the climate is warming faster, and the population is larger, than at any point in history.”
Holes in Ross Sea Ice Grow and Shrink in Unexpected Cycle: Changes in polynya area in the Ross Sea region off Antarctica follow a previously unidentified 16-year periodicity, Amy Mayer, Eos, 4/9/24
Ocean Heat Has Shattered Records for More Than a Year. What’s Happening? There have been record temperatures every day for more than a year. Scientists are investigating what’s behind the extraordinary measurements, Delger Erdenasanaa, NY Times, 4/10/24: “…the“massive, massive records” set over the past year are beyond what scientists would expect to see even considering climate change.”
Draining the World of Fresh Water: Two recent studies show human activity is drying up the planet’s lakes, rivers and aquifers, Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee, 4/11/24
Methane from landfills is detectable from space – and driving the climate crisis: Landfill trash is the third-largest source of human-caused methane pollution in the US. To fight global heating, curb waste, Gina McCarthy, The Guardian, 4/9/24: “Let’s keep organics out of the trash, so landfills are not their final resting place. And let’s tighten emissions controls nationwide, so small leaks don’t become super-emitters.”
Making a Marsh out of a Mud Pile: In San Francisco Bay, scientists are looking for a better way to rebuild flagging marshland, Erica Gies, Hakai, 4/10/24: “The goal is to increase the vertical growth of the marsh from its current rate of one to two millimeters a year to a few centimeters per year.”
Industry has a huge carbon footprint. This technology could help: A new industrial-strength heat pump boiler uses electricity to generate the high-temperature steam needed to manufacture many products, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 4/11/24
Viruses Finally Reveal Their Complex Social Life: New research has uncovered a social world of viruses full of cheating, cooperation and other intrigues, suggesting that viruses make sense only as members of a community, Carl Zimmer, Quanta, 4/11/24: “In new research published in February, Christopher Brooke reported that an infected cell can produce hundreds of cryptic proteins that are encoded by incomplete viral genomes and new to science.”
The Quest to Map the Inside of the Proton: Long-anticipated experiments that use light to mimic gravity are revealing the distribution of energies, forces, and pressures inside a subatomic particle for the first time, Charlie Wood, Wired, 4/14/24: “Physicists have begun to explore the proton as if it were a subatomic planet.”
World's going to hell, with all these
villages and trails.
Wild duck flocks aren't
what they used to be.
Aurochs grow rare.
—from “Civilization,” Gary Snyder
Health, Wellness
Bird Flu Is Spreading in Alarming New Ways: H5N1 has infected cattle across the US and jumped from a mammal to a human for the first time. Experts fear it may someday evolve to spread among humans, David Cox, Wired, 4/11/24
I was the poster girl for OCD. Then I began to question everything I’d been told about mental illness: When I sought help for crippling invasive thoughts, I was told I had a disease like any other. But I wasn’t able to recover until I understood the fallacy at the heart of mental healthcare, Rose Cartwright, The Guardian, 4/13/24: “This is what is wrong with the medical model: a failure to understand mental health in context.”
Birds
What's The Largest Flock Of Birds Ever Seen In The Skies? Birds of a feather flock together – sometimes in their millions upon millions, Tom Hale, IFL Science, 4/10/24: “An unverified account from 1866 says there was a flock of passenger pigeons (aka wild pigeons) that flew through southern Ontario measuring 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) wide and 482 kilometers (300 miles) long. The trailing flock reportedly took 14 hours to pass a single point. If that’s true, it would consist of approximately 3.5 billion birds and could be considered the largest flock of birds ever seen.”
Scientists turn bird dreams into captivating music, Sanjana Gajbhiye, Earth.com, 4/12/24: “We can use the muscle activity patterns as time-dependent parameters of a model of birdsong production and synthesize the corresponding song.”
All while pious May,
flowers in her hair, an air
of superiority perfuming her,
snickers from the sidelines,
waiting to take over.
—from “April,” Terence Winch
Every week as I compile these stories and links, I think about hope and love, family, friends. I think about you who are reading this newsletter, and how we must stand together, lean on each other—despite all, I know that we will prevail. Your messages back mean alot. Please keep in touch.
And wherever you are, whoever you are with, whatever you are doing — thanks for who you are and what you do. Please continue to keep in touch. Send messages and news.
Above all, stay well; share love; work for good. We need each other, now more than ever.
Love from here—David
I'm barely keeping up with emails, and behind with TWT. However, whenever I read/see the articles/intros/charts/photos/poetry fragments in TWT, I'm deeply grateful to David Wilk for bringing together so many disperate chapters of the BIG PICTURE.
I'm barely keeping up with emails, and behind with TWT. However, whenever I read/see the articles/intros/charts/photos/poetry fragments in TWT, I'm deeply grateful to David Wilk for bringing together so many disparate chapters of the BIG PICTURE.