The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 83, December 12, 2021 (V2 #31)
“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.” –Martin Luther King, Jr. 1964
“Today, in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, the Supreme Court undermined the federal protection of civil rights that has shaped our world since the 1950s.”—Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 12/10/21
There is so much news this week on many fronts. I apologize in advance if this is overwhelming. Choose what you want to read but going forward I am going to highlight the links I think are the most necessary to read in full.
…And with the power of a word … Et par le pouvoir d’un mot
I start my life over Je recommence ma vie
I was born to know you Je suis né pour te connaître
To name you Pour te nommer
Liberty. Liberté. – Paul Éluard
Polly Ticks
Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun: January 6 was practice. Donald Trump’s GOP is much better positioned to subvert the next election, Barton Gellman, The Atlantic, 12/6/21: “If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024.”
Are We Doomed? To head off the next insurrection, we’ll need to practice envisioning the worst, George Packer, The Atlantic, 12/6/21
We need to be ready for the political violence that is coming, Lucian K. Truscott IV, Newsletter, 12/9/21: “What’s coming are elections in the absence of democracy. The political violence that follows will bring the death of politics as we have known it.”
Defining Democracy Down, Marc Elias, Democracy Docket, 12/10/21: “When we excuse the inexcusable, make heroes out of cowardly actors and ignore the indefensible, we define democracy down.”
We’re Not Going Back to “Before Roe”: We’re headed somewhere worse, Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, 12/8/21
What Roe Could Take Down With It: The logic being used against Roe could weaken the legal foundations of many rights Americans value deeply, Kimberly Wehle, The Atlantic, 12/3/21: “From a legal perspective, if Roe falls, it’s hard to see what else will still stand.”
Barrett is wrong: Adoption doesn’t ‘take care of’ the burden of motherhood: This view of adoption and abortion has failed American women, Gretchen Sisson, Washington Post, 12/3/21
The Supreme Court isn’t well. The only hope for a cure is more justices, Nancy Gertner, Lawrence H. Tribe, Washington Post, 12/10/21
The West’s nightmare: a war on three fronts: There has never been a more unsettling strategic landscape in my lifetime – we must turn our attention to the prospect of conflict, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph, 12/9/21
Turning outrage into power: How far right is changing GOP, Brian Slodysko, AP News, 12/6/21: “The path to power for Republicans in Congress is now rooted in the capacity to generate outrage.”
Trump’s Michigan allies are plotting to bypass the governor and impose new voting restrictions, Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, Tesnim Zekeria, Popular Information, 12/9/21
Two election workers break silence after enduring Trump backers’ threats, Linda So, Jason Szep, Reuters, 12/10/21
Critical Race Theory Bans in Florida, New Hampshire Target Teachers: This op-ed argues that backlash to teaching race in schools is placing teachers under attack, Lexi McMenamin, Teen Vogue, 12/10/21
A Massive Oil Spill Helped One Billionaire Avoid Paying Income Tax for 14 Years, Jesse Eisinger, Paul Kiel, Jeff Ernsthausen, ProPublica, 12/9/21
Climate and Science
Nuclear Fusion: Why the Race to Harness the Power of the Sun Just Sped Up: Fusion companies have now raised $2.3 billion in investment, believing they can begin producing unlimited amounts of zero emissions energy by the 2030s, Tom Wilson, Ian Bott, Inside Climate News, 12/8/21
Crude reality: One U.S. state consumes half the oil from the Amazon rainforest: As oil companies carve up more of the rainforest, a new study says no place in the world uses more oil from beneath the Amazon than California, Rich Schapiro, Christine Romo, Santiago Cornejo, NBC News, 12/2/21
A Future With Little to No Snow? What That Means for the West: A new study hopes to inspire water managers — and the rest of us — to begin planning for how climate change will dramatically reduce snowpack, Tara Lohan, The Revelator, 12/6/21
General Motors to manufacture electric car battery cells in U.S.: A battery cell factory is slated to open in August 2022 in Lordstown, Ohio, with another to open in 2023 in Tennessee, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 12/6/21
How a Native American tribe on Long Island is losing its land to rising seas, Emma Newberger, CNBC, 12/5/21: “This is the only place we have to remain. This is our homeland.”
How ‘Big Oil’ works the system and keeps winning: Oil and gas interests have refined their techniques to stay a step ahead over decades. Don’t look for those plans to stop anytime soon, Naomi Oreskes, Jeff Nesbit, Yale Climate Connections, 12/10/21
A gray wolf’s epic journey ends in death on a California highway: OR-93 traveled further south than any wolf had in a hundred years. Even after death, he continues to inspire, Katharine Gammon, The Guardian, 12/5/21
IKEA Assembles a Future Without Plastic Packaging: The Scandinavian furniture retailer says it will be plastic-free by 2028, Matt Alderton, Treehugger, 12/3/21
Hiding in plain sight: How plastics inflame the climate crisis: The plastic industry could soon surpass coal in greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, its growing climate impact is largely unnoticed, Marina Schauffler, Maine Monitor, 12/5/21
Watch this magic plastic instant-coffee package disappear in your drink: It’s made of seaweed (tasteless, don’t worry)—and can also work for things like tea bags, noodles, or detergent, Adele Peters, Fast Company, 12/7/21
Southern Cross star is 14.5 times heavier than sun, scientists say: Using astroseismology, researchers have calculated that the bright blue giant Beta Crucis is 11m years old, Eva Corlett, The Guardian, 12/7/21
Batman loach returns: fish feared extinct found in Turkey: Scientists working on the Search For The Lost Fishes project have spotted the freshwater Batman River loach, which has not been seen since 1974, Graeme Green, The Guardian, 12/9/21
Thousands of Honeybees Stared Down Spain’s Cumbre Vieja Volcano. They Won: Five hives survived about 50 days covered in volcanic ash. To stay alive, they sealed their hives with bee glue and ate their honey stores, Jody Serrano, Gizmodo, 12/5/21
Florida will begin emergency feeding and rescue of starving manatees: Record numbers of endangered manatees are dying as polluted waters kill off their food sources, Jessica Glenza, The Guardian, 12/10/21
Scenic stretch of Lost Coast redwoods to be spared the ax, Brian Melley, AP News, 12/10/21
Three Myths About Renewable Energy and the Grid, Debunked: Renewable energy skeptics argue that because of their variability, wind and solar cannot be the foundation of a dependable electricity grid. But the expansion of renewables and new methods of energy management and storage can lead to a grid that is reliable and clean, Amory B. Lovins and M.V. Ramana, Yale Climate 360, 12/9/21
Inside Clean Energy: Batteries Got Cheaper in 2021. So How Close Are We to Evs That Cost Less than Gasoline Vehicles? Despite inflation concerns, Evs remain on a path for price parity with gasoline models, Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News, 12/9/21
5 environmental victories from 2021 that offer hope: In a year of seemingly continuous bad news, there are many reasons to be hopeful about the environment, Kieran Mulvaney, National Geographic, 12/8/21
Iceland facility sucks carbon dioxide from air, turns it into rock: The technology will need a lot of scaling up to make a difference to the climate, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 12/9/21
Stanford researchers point the way to avoiding blackouts with clean, renewable energy, Stanford Woods Inst. for the Environment, Eurekalert, 12/7/21
Can these high-tech methane detectors help the U.S. reach its climate goals? Methane is worse for climate change than carbon emissions. But to stop it, we first need to find it, Britany Robinson, Fast Company, 12/7/21
Technique enables real-time rendering of scenes in 3D: The new machine-learning system can generate a 3D scene from an image about 15,000 times faster than other methods, Adam Zewe, MIT News, 12/7/21
Scientists find first in human evidence of how memories form, News Team, UT Southwestern Medical Center, 12/6/21: “The most significant finding was that firing occurs with different timing relative to other brain activity when memories are being retrieved. This slight difference in timing, called “phase offset,” has not been reported in humans before. Together, these results explain how the brain can “re-experience” an event, but also keep track of whether the memory is something new or something previously encoded.”
Coal powered the industrial revolution. It left behind an ‘absolutely massive’ environmental catastrophe: Scenes from the end of coal: A blasted mountaintop in Kentucky, an underground inferno in Pennsylvania, slowly dying maples in New Hampshire and a toxic pile of waste in Florida, James Bruggers, Mountain State Spotlight, 12/12/21
Out of History. Out of Fear.
For John Moritz
Asphodel the flower
Tells me stories
As I sleep
Noise outside my window
Reminds me not to weep
There is just this
Small thing
I am left to keep
Rubbing shoulders
With the devils
And the stars
Before I leap
—David Wilk
Pandemic, Kulcher, Joy, Fear
Earth Is Getting a ‘Black Box’ to Hold Humans Accountable for Climate Change: When a plane crashes, its flight recorder is critical to piecing together the missteps that led to calamity. Now the planet is getting its own in case it self-destructs, Livia Albeck-Rivka, NY Times, 12/9/21
Figuring out omicron – here’s what scientists are doing right now to understand the new coronavirus variant, Peter Kasson, The Conversation, 12/9/21
Omicron could become dominant in some European countries by next week, officials predict, Rick Noack, Washington Post, 12/10/21
Searching for the Sacred on a Planet in Crisis: On Reconciling the Scientific and the Spiritual, Megan Mayhew Bergman, LitHub, 12/9/21: “Light filtered through the leaves of a maple tree, glowing like stained glass. A hymn of wingbeats as Snow Geese come in for a landing on a damp Vermont field. Awe as moonlight falls across the glassy Altamaha River on a still night in Georgia, the puff of air as a dolphin nears the boat and rises to breathe.”
Coach for social change leaders offers support to overcome climate anxiety: “I want to live in a world where our society is structured such that we’re not in crisis mode all the time, where we’re not urgently running around exhausting ourselves.” Julie Grant, The Daily Climate, 12/8/21
Techno-optimism for 2022: What you should be excited about, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 12/8/21
Buy Nothing groups offer an antidote to waste and isolation, with a world of free stuff: Besieged by inflation and isolation, many people are finding purpose and connection in these ‘circular gift economies,’ Taylor Telford, Washington Post, 12/10/21
Keeping the Memory of Zora Neale Hurston Alive in a Small Florida City: The preservation of a heritage trail, where the author and anthropologist spent the last years of her life, takes a whole community, Tuneka Onnekikami, Atlas Obscura, 12/8/21
Sixty-five percent (65%) of voters believe that big government and big business act together in ways that hurt everyday Americans.15% disagree and 20% are not sure, Scott Rasmussen, Ballotpedia, 12/8/21
New Brain Maps Can Predict Behaviors: Rapid advances in large-scale connectomics are beginning to spotlight the importance of individual variations in the neural circuitry. They also highlight the limitations of “wiring diagrams” alone, Monique Brouilette, Quanta Magazine, 12/9/21
The Loss I Didn’t Have Words For: After two miscarriages I didn’t know how to grieve, poetry allowed me to ask: Who are you, who were you, who might you have been? Lindsay Turner, The Atlantic, 12/7/21
Joe Rogan Wrapped: A year of COVID-19 misinformation, right-wing myths, and anti-trans rhetoric: Joe Rogan: “You can say whatever you want. We’re on Spotify,” Alex Paterson, Media Matters, 12/2/21: “Spotify’s $100 million paycheck to Rogan is funding increasingly dangerous and bigoted content.”
New Writerscast interview – Peter Quinn’s historical novel, Civil War New York City, Banished Children of Eve.
Literary birthdays
Gustave Flaubert, December 12, 1821
Kenneth Patchen, December 13, 1911
Paul Eluard, December 14, 1895
Muriel Rukeyser, December 15, 1913
Philip K. Dick, December 16, 1928
Jane Austen, December 16, 1775
Ford Madox Ford, December 17, 1873
Alfred Bester, December 18, 1913
Ossie Davis, December 18, 1917
Birds to the Rescue
Peregrine falcons return to Taughannock Falls after 75 year absence, Zoe Freer-Hessler, The Ithaca Voice, 12/8/21
A Colorado family tried to save their cattle ranch by betting big on rare birds. It’s paying off: From getting the folks at Audubon to certify the ranch as bird-friendly, to selling carbon sequestration credits for the tall grass, the May Ranch near Lamar is modernizing stewardship, Michael Booth, The Colorado Sun, 12/5/21
Light-colored feathers may help migrating birds stay cool on long flights: Images of more than 10,000 bird species reveal that farther fliers tend to have lighter feathers, Jonathan Lambert, Science News, 12/6/21
How Birds Help Keep the Pajaro River Levees Safe Without Poison, Elyse DeFranco, Bay Nature, 12/6/21
Vancouver Island’s Crowtographer captures one of nature’s most misunderstood birds, Rochelle Baker, National Observer, 12/9/21
‘Incredibly moving’: songs by threatened birds beat Abba to No 5 spot on Australian music charts: Recorded over four decades, the calls of 53 native birds were gathered on an album raising funds and awareness for species facing extinction, Andrew Stafford, The Guardian, 12/10/21: Songs of Disappearance, a collaboration between the Bowerbird Collective and David Stewart.
Book of the Week: The Dawn of Everything (Radio Open Source program here.)
You're sick of hangin' around and you'd like to travel
Get tired of travelin', you want to settle down
I guess they can't revoke your soul for tryin'
Get out of the door and light out and look all around
Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me
Other times, I can barely see
Lately, it occurs to me
What a long, strange trip it's been
—from Truckin’, Grateful Dead: Jerome J. Garcia / Philip Lesh / Robert Hall Weir / Robert C. Christie Hunter © Universal Music Publishing Group
Yep, it’s still the weird times all around. Be well, stay safe, keep telling what you know. No secrets.