The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 249, February 16, 2025 (V5 #41)
And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.—Audre Lorde
In short, one may say anything about the history of the world—anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can’t say is that it’s rational.—Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
Books, Music, Art, Culture
Alexis Rockman Paints Humanity’s Final Season: Taking on Thomas Cole’s epic The Course of Empire, the New York artist asks if we’ve all had a good run, Hrag Vartanian, Hyperallergic, 2/13/25: “…each of these paintings suggests that the larger plague is us, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow…will only arrive when we disappear.”
About a Hat: An excerpt from SOLACE: A memoir, Cornelia Maude Spelman, Oldster, 2/10/25: “And as I put my hand in my yellow canvas bag, the one that hangs so handily across my body so that I could just stuff things in it—a book, a scarf, gloves, a hat—I realized that my hat was not in there.”
‘It seemed wrong to write about normal life after that horrendous election’: US novelist Anne Tyler, Lisa Allardice, The Guardian, 2/15/25: “At 83, The Accidental Tourist author discusses the secret to a good marriage, publishing her 25th book and why she can no longer keep politics out of her novels: ‘Everything I write is about trying to lead a life other than my own.’”
A Fantasy of Domesticity: Why We’re Drawn to the False Promise of the Tradwife: on Baking, Community and Navigating Societal Expectations of Heteronormativity, Larissa Pham, LitHub, 2/12/25: “As much as I wrestled with the dyad’s heteronormativity, I wanted it in some form—the sweet, simple household of two.”
We must turn over the reins to our children and grandchildren: Clinging to power in the autumn of our years makes it impossible for succeeding generations to step up and begin managing the world they will inherit, Bill Schubart, VTDigger, 2/9/25: “As elders, we’re hoarding the decision-making spaces our children need to manage a future that works for them.”
Full-Throated Explicit Dehumanization: Trans people will be outed, and more vulnerable to discrimination, harassment, and violence, Paisley Currah, N+1, 2/10/25: “These policies work together to push transgender people out of workplaces, schools, health care and daily life—deliberately making it impossible to function in society. These orders all fit together as parts of a single coordinated strategy.”
Money for Nothing: Finance and the End of Culture, Ryan Boyd, Public Books, 2/11/25: “The same class of people stripping journalism and higher education for parts, then, are also fully in control of the apparatus used to produce narrative and visual art.”
A heartfelt plea to ditch the smartphone, Mark Hurst, Creative Good, 2/14/25: “ The point here isn’t to follow a script of which devices and apps to use or not, but rather to think for yourself about which tech really serves you, and which should just be thrown in the river.”
Why we all need sisu – the Finnish concept of action and creativity in hard times, Moya Sarner, The Guardian, 2/10/25: “A better life is not sitting there waiting for you to find it in an exercise routine or a therapist or a self-help book; it comes from living and loving and losing in freedom and in hope.”
A New Threat to the Freedom of the Press: The modern free press hinges on a single Supreme Court case. Trump wants to reverse it, Jeffrey Cieslikowski, Persuasion, 2/12/25 (Referring to New York Times v Sullivan, 1960): “Without Sullivan, the press would again be muzzled by despotic and self-interested public officials.”
How Trump’s Kennedy Center takeover could change the arts: The government has enormous coercive power over the cultural sector. The Trump administration is poised to use it, Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 2/10/25: “When you look at potential dystopic futures, often the path from here to there is made possible from everyone, individually, doing what seems to be safest in the short term.”
A New Kind of Crisis for American Universities: The ivory tower has been breached, Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 2/10/25: “Cutting back their research funding is not in the nation’s interests. Neither is insisting on the status quo.”
Winter is Here: On the Chilling Effect of Elon Musk and Donald Trump: About the Growing Specter of Self-Censorship, Rob Spillman, LitHub, 2/13/25: “With his authoritarian orders, the president—and his unelected South African Rasputin—have eliminated the fundamental tools of discussion and debate, namely words themselves.”
The partisan divide in the country is the result of publishing technology, Greg Krehbiel, Krehbiel Group, 2/13/25: “The partisan divide in the country, in which we all live in our own epistemic bubbles, isn’t a cultural or political shift — it’s a consequence of the technologies that make it easy for anyone to become a content creator.”
Microdosing Hope: Nullifying the Nullifiers, Rob Brezsny, Astrology Newsletter, 2/11/25: “Please guide us to stay fully present during the garish melodrama while maintaining faith in humanity's capacity for growth through crisis.”
This Be the Place: A Name Is a Thing That Fades: Sometimes the whole duration of place exists in memory all at once, Dan Beachy-Quick, Poetry Foundation, 2/10/25: “Life and death aren’t as separate as we might assume. The graves taught me their lesson of time and timelessness.”
Every death in an alley,
Every meltdown? We know
We wouldn’t be much, if thorns
Didn’t drive night into wet blooms.
—from “Anger,” Yusef Komunyakaa
Politics, Economics, Technology
IT IS A COUP: This is what should be on every front page in 150 point banner headlines. All I have is this Substack but I lay it beneath your feet and pray to a higher power that I'm wrong, Carole Cadwalladr, The Power, 2/10/25
‘The greatest propaganda op in history’: Trump’s reshaping of US culture evokes past antidemocratic regimes: The president’s full-court press to dominate media and control cultural institutions is straight out of the authoritarian playbook, David Smith, The Guardian, 2/16/25: “The mainstream American media has failed. What is happening is not a normal transition; it’s a constitutional crisis. That’s the way the American media should be covering this and they’re not.”
Fascism Isn't Coming to America, It's Here. Do Americans Have the Strength to Drive it Out? John Pavlovitz, Beautiful Mess, 2/15/25: “Decent Americans, we need to listen to History right now. She is warning us that we are on the precipice of a free-fall. We can't afford to go to sleep now. We need to wake ourselves up.”
Your World Is Burning. Here's What You Can Actually Do About It, Joan Westenberg, Westenberg, 2/15/25: “…powerlessness is a lie we tell ourselves. Your circle of control exists. It’s real. Not as a motivational concept or a bullshit management framework but as the basic building block of action.”
We Are in a Battle for Truth: The Trump regime's goal is to untether us from factual reality. We can't let them succeed, Steven Beschloss, America, America, 2/14/25
The Weak Strongman: Impotence and Unfreedom, Together, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 2/13/25: “America’s friends are afraid not of him but of what we all have to lose. America’s enemies are not frightened when Trump kicks over the lantern and sets things on fire. Quite the contrary: he is doing exactly what they want.”
Out of Chaos and Corruption, a Revelation and a Reckoning, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, 2/11/25: “The hostile takeover of the United States government we are now living through, with the full collusion of the Republican Party, reflects years of effort by Trump, a convicted felon, to create an environment propitious to smash-and-grab governance. The vehicle for this plunder is Musk…”
Donald Trump’s Misrule of Law: By insisting on its own supremacy, the executive branch of the US government under President Donald Trump is effectively seeking to alter America’s constitutional framework of checks and balances among co-equal branches of government. Trump has no authority to execute this change, but that will not be enough to stop him, Richard K. Sherwin, Project Syndicate, 2/12/25
Overwhelm… Overreach… Overthrown: How Trump Is Cooking His Own Goose, Michael Moore, Newsletter, 2/14/25: “He thinks he is King. He believes he has the powers of God. He has already said there will not be a need for another election. He means it…there is a point where the citizenry will have seen enough.”
The Great Surrender: Senate Republicans have confirmed Trump’s least qualified Cabinet nominees—and given up their role as an independent check on the president, David A. Graham, The Atlantic, 2/13/25
Trump Justice Department Moves to Complete 'Openly Corrupt Legal Bailout' of Eric Adams: “The Adams case confirms that as long as Bondi is in office, the rule of law will be subordinate to Trump's personal motivations,” Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, 2/15/25
Danielle Sassoon’s American Bravery: A conservative prosecutor in New York makes the first bold move against Donald Trump’s rampaging Presidency, Eric Lach, New Yorker, 2/14/25: “You wouldn’t think it possible that a Federalist Society member and former clerk for the archconservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would show more grit in the face of Trumpism than the entire leadership of the national Democratic Party, but here we are.”
Statement from the American Bar Association: Lawyers have a professional obligation not to be complicit in undermining democracy, Asha Rangappa, Freedom Academy, 2/11/25: “No American can be proud of a government that carries out change in this way.
Elon Musk, Welfare Queen, Scott Galloway, No Mercy/No Malice, 2/14/25: “There would be no SpaceX without NASA…Tesla…has accepted an estimated $2.5 billion in government support.”
Trump Will Force the Supreme Court to Face Its Biggest Fear: Throughout US history, the judiciary has worried that a president might simply ignore its decisions, Greg Stohr, Bloomberg, 2/15/25
Trump’s Looming Deficit Disaster: During his first term, US President Donald Trump pursued aggressive tariffs and tax cuts that led to a sharp increase in both the trade and budget deficits. Having seemingly learned nothing, he appears determined to double down on these destructive policies, risking a global downturn, Desmond Lachman, Project Syndicate, 2/11/25
The #Resistance is no more. But a quieter fightback to Trump 2.0 is growing: There’s no sign of the mass protests of his first term – but Democrats are building a less flashy politics of opposition, Jon Allsop, The Guardian, 2/13/25: “…he might be enjoying a honeymoon, but his radical and chaotic early moves in office are already likely eating up his political and cultural capital.”
Democrats: This Is War. Isn’t It Time You Acted Like It? Trump is counting on his opposition’s deeply ingrained fear of being divisive to give him the room to break the country. So far he’s getting what he wants, Michael Tomasky, New Republic, 2/10/25: “No sitting around and waiting for things to change. Help make them change. Public opinion will shift more quickly if you kindle that shift.”
How Democrats Can Fight Back: Rep. Jamie Raskin lays out the legal strategy to oppose Trump but says, “We’re not going to sue our way out of a political crisis”—Democrats need a political organizing strategy, Chris Lehmann, The Nation, 2/14/25
What Republicans really mean when they blame ‘DEI:’ Referencing DEI is the new rightwing abstraction deployed by Republicans to conceal their anti-Black racism, Mehdi Hasan, The Guardian, 2/11/25: “DEI – short for diversity, equity and inclusion – is thrown around by high-profile conservatives, from the president of the United States downwards, for the express purpose of undermining Black people in public life.”
Can the President Dismantle the Department of Education by Executive Order? Laura Booth, Just Security, 2/14/25: “Because the department was created by Congress, it can only be closed or its functions transferred by an act of Congress.” DW: however the damage done while trying is the point. Read Project 2025.
Trump’s Mass Firing of Inspectors General Bulldozed the Way for Elon Musk’s Unaccountable Shadow Government: A functional Congress would have impeached the president for deliberately flouting the law, Paul Matzko, Unpopulist, 2/16/25
This Small Rust-Belt City Holds the Secret to Democrats’ Latino Woes: Latino voters shifted dramatically toward Trump in the last election. Reading, Pennsylvania offers a clue to how Democrats can claw them back, Greg Sargent, New Republic, 2/14/25
Trump is driving China and South America’s relationship to its ‘best moment:’ The US is targeting its own allies and its withdrawal from the region has left a power vacuum for China to fill in, Tiago Rogero, The Guardian, 2/12/25
Nearly Two in Three American Voters Oppose Trump's Gaza 'Takeover' Plan: New poll shows voters overwhelmingly oppose Trump's proposal for the US to take ownership of Gaza and forcibly resettle the Palestinians who live there, Ryan O’Donnell, Zeteo, 2/12/25
Misreadings are best. Misunderstandings are also best
but to be misunderstood is not the goal.
—from “Some of the Questions to Consider,” Kim Addonizio
Science, Environment
Blue states hope their clean energy plans withstand collision with Trump: His administration has blocked leases, permits and grants for renewable projects, Alex Brown, Stateline, 2/11/25
You already know Elon Musk. You need to know Harold Hamm: The billionaire oil tycoon's fingerprints are all over Trump's high-speed push to crush environmental regulation and renewables, Emily Atkin, Heated, 2/12/25: “The primary goal of Trump’s energy policies is to drive profits for Hamm and the other oil billionaires who donated lavishly to his campaign.”
We thought these places were useless. They may help save the world: Swamps get a bad rep. But there’s a good reason why we should learn to love them, Dino Grandoni, Washington Post, 2/12/25: “Restoring peatlands so they sponge up more CO2, along with preserving the ones still around, offers a low-tech, nature-based solution for fighting climate change.”
My no-plastic life: I tried to cut out single-use items for a month – and it almost broke me: Sourcing fruit and veg without wrapping was hard enough, but finding an eco-friendly way to brush my teeth was its own world of pain. And as for my 6pm crisps fix – forget it, Emma Beddington, The Guardian, 2/12/25
Bacteria, brains, and sugar: Scientists uncover new connections, European Molecular Biology Lab, ScienceDaily, 2/10/25: “Using a new method to study how carbohydrates modify proteins, scientists have discovered that gut bacteria can alter molecular signatures in the brain.”
Supermarket coolers are heating the planet: The stores refrigerate food using systems that often leak powerful climate-warming gases called HFCs, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 2/12/25: “…refrigeration leaks in U.S. supermarkets create as much climate-warming pollution each year as burning more than 30 million tons of coal.”
Consumerism—and the Chemicals in All of Our Stuff—Is Thwarting the Transition From Fossil Fuels: Climate change mitigation strategies that don’t address overconsumption and reduce dependence on fossil fuel-derived chemicals will exacerbate health harms and biodiversity loss, scientists warn, Liza Gross, Inside Climate News, 2/12/25
With Sea Ice Melting, Killer Whales Are Moving Into the Arctic: Killer whales have begun to migrate farther into previously icy regions of the Arctic, preying on narwhal, beluga, and bowhead. Scientists say their increasing numbers could shift food webs in ways that affect both endangered whale populations and subsistence Inuit hunters, Ed Struzik, Yale Environment 360, 2/13/25
Earth’s acid test: When did ocean acidity allow life to commence? A new study finds that ocean acidity may have prevented life on Earth from developing for the planet’s first 500 million years, Jim Shelton, Yale News, 2/10/25
'Game changing' release of Type Ia Supernovae data may hold key to the history of the Universe, Lancaster Univ, ScienceDaily, 2/14/25: “A unique dataset of Type Ia Supernovae being released today could change how cosmologists measure the expansion history of the Universe.”
Euclid telescope captures Einstein ring revealing warping of space: Dazzling image shows galaxy more than 4bn light years away, whose starlight has been bent due to gravity, Hannah Devlin, The Guardian, 2/10/25: “The Euclid space telescope has captured a rare phenomenon called an Einstein ring that reveals the extreme warping of space by a galaxy’s gravity.”
Ceres’s Organics Might Not Be Homegrown After All: Scientists have been unable to determine whether the dwarf planet’s organics were produced by its own chemical processes or delivered by asteroids. New evidence implicates asteroids, Sarah Stanley, Eos, 2/10/25
Scientists detect a mysterious messenger from the cosmos: With a deep-sea detector off the coast of Sicily, scientists have captured evidence of an exceptional ultra-high-energy neutrino, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Washington Post, 2/12/25
In the language of a gong, water clashed against the rocks,
an elegy to the fish that embalmed our dead inside their cold bodies.
—from “Blue,” Hussain Ahmed
Health, Wellness
The Silent Threat Beneath Our Feet: How Deregulation Fuels the Spread of Forever Chemicals: The Trump administration has already rolled back planned limits on PFAS chemicals, which have been linked to cancer and other health problems, Paul Adepoju, The Revelator, 2/10/25
Trans healthcare providers face chaos under Trump order: ‘like withholding CPR:’ The director of a US group of 1,000 medical providers dedicated to LGBTQ+ health equity addresses the fallout, Sam Levin, The Guardian, 2/12/25
Long-term yogurt consumption tied to decreased incidence of certain types of colorectal cancer, Mass General Brigham, ScienceDaily, 2/12/25
RFK Jr.’s disinformation is a rallying cry for women in STEM: Strong scientific research on women’s health is an antidote for conspiracy theories, Kathryn Rogers, Environmental Health News, 2/14/25
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
—from “Remember,” Joy Harjo
Birds, Birding
Nature-friendly solar farms create bird havens in agricultural areas, Paul Casciato, Phys.Org, 2/13/25
Miscellaneous
A new Writerscast interview now live: my interview with Eric Vickrey on his book, Season of Shattered Dreams: Postwar Baseball, the Spokane Indians, and a Tragic Bus Crash that Changed Everything.
Four weeks into this unreality, and every week seems to be worse than the last. I hope that Michael Moore and optimistic others are right, that Americans ultimately will reject Trump’s fascism. I am not sure it will happen soon enough. We are in the midst a fast-moving autocratic coup with every value of our republic at risk. I can’t report every outrageous action taken by Trump & his brownshirts, there are so many, but I will try to let you know what we can do oppose them, how we can together work to restore sanity to our world, how we can remain human and humane in the face of such anger, stupidity and hate.
We are the people who must do the work of democracy, and we are not alone.
Please send comments, ideas, keep in touch and build community. If you can share The Weird Times, I’d be grateful too.
Stay strong. Keep in touch and always, love the ones you’re with. We need each other more than ever.
Love—David
The world is dark but it is not hopeless.—Clarence Darrow
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.—Anne Frank