The Weird Times
The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 176, September 24, 2023 (V4 #20)
If we’re going to continue to move forward as a nation we cannot allow concerns about discomfort to displace knowledge, truth or history.—Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.—John F. Kennedy
Books, Music, Art, and Culture
Explore the Ancient Aztec Capital in This Lifelike 3D Rendering: We spoke with Thomas Kole, a digital artist who re-created the capital of the Aztec Empire in such detail that it looks like a living metropolis, Anna Lagos, Wired, 9/18/23
We Are Not Alone: 50 Years of Ms. Magazine: On the Making of America's First Feminist Publication, Gloria Steinem, LitHub, 9/20/23: “Because only if each of us has a torch will there be enough light.” Book: 50 Years of Ms.
All Stories Float Ashore: On the Chinese Titanic Poet-Sailor Deportee, "Men of Exclusion held truth close, sailing like the wind into a port of safety,” Fae Myenne Ng, LitHub, 9/21/23: “Tears dried, sorrow dissolved, death tricked, laughter arrived: ‘Ha. Ha.’” Book: Orphan Bachelors
What Emily Dickinson Left Behind: The winding story of how a trove of 8,000 of the poet’s family objects were saved, Martha Ackmann, The Atlantic, 9/20/23: “Inside a box were unfinished quilt blocks backed with scraps from discarded letters. The torn paper stiffened dozens of red, gold, and blue silk blocks waiting to be stitched into a quilt. A word or two peeked out from the letters tucked inside: we might, nine, and the unmistakable first letters of a last name: Dickinson.”
Why Silicon Valley’s biggest AI developers are hiring poets: Training data companies are grabbing writers of fiction, drama, poetry, and also general humanities experts to improve AI creative writing, Andrew Deck, Rest of World, 9/20/23
Book banners target public libraries, Judd Legum, Tesnim Zekeria, Rebecca Crosby, Popular Information, 9/21/23: “… groups with a political agenda have turned their crusade to public libraries, the very embodiment of the First Amendment in our society.”
Gram Parsons: The Godfather of Americana, Eoghan Lyng, Culture Sonar, 9/19/23: Parsons died September 19, 1973.
In my hour of darkness
In my time of need
Oh Lord, grant me vision
Oh Lord, grant me speed
—from “In My Hour of Darkness,” sung by Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, written by Gram Parsons
Politicks and Economicks
A Dire Moment, Steve Schmidt, The Warning, 9/24/23: “Fascism is rising in 2020s America because our democracy has grown weak, corrupted and rotten. A decaying society is vulnerable to a great danger: a strongman with a promise that they alone can fix everything. Sound familiar?”
Americans Are Sleepwalking Through a National Emergency: Serious times require serious citizens, Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 9/18/23: “In 2016 broadcast media was totally inadequate to the job of covering an aspiring authoritarian … Today—even after witnessing an insurrection—they still don’t seem to understand the situation and their complicity in it.” Democrats and their liberal allies claim to be in full mobilization mode to stop Trump and defang his threat to the constitutional order. But are they?”
US Elections at Risk of Political Violence as Guns and Distrust in Democracy Spread: “Ahead of next year's elections, it is critical that states take the steps recommended in the report to ensure that elections remain free from violence,” said a co-author, Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, 9/18/23
Winning the Ideas, Losing the Politics: To win politically, everything will have to break right for Democrats, and then some, Robert Kuttner, American Prospect, 9/20/23: “Barring a health emergency, Biden is who we have, for better or for worse.”
A President’s Derangement, a General’s Duty: How Mark Milley worked to avert catastrophe, Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 9/21/23: “Everyone knew Trump was unhinged. It wasn’t even remotely a secret.”
‘Get involved, because the Nazis certainly are:’ Talking with Amanda Moore about her time with the alt-right, LYZ, Men Yell at Me, 9/20/23: “It’s important to know that there's a percentage of people in and around the Republican Party who are just blatantly Nazis.”
Election Deniers Focus Recruitment in ‘Out of the Way Places:’ Local election officials fear supporters of Donald Trump's conspiracy theories are undermining civic infrastructure in rural America, Claire Carlson, Barn Raiser, 9/20/23
A Cure for Mad Poll Disease: Horse race polls are opinion journalism, not science, Michael Podhorzer, Weekend Reading, 9/21/23: “Our confidence in any particular proposition should depend on the number and credibility of independent sources of evidence corroborating the proposition. By failing to meet this standard, the media has become a reckless super-spreader of Mad Poll Disease.”
The Court’s Conservative Constitutional Revolution: The bloc of conservative justices on the Supreme Court have dismantled many of the legal precedents on their hit list. What’s in store for the new term? Noah Feldman, NY Review of Books, 10/5/2023 issue. DW: Billionaire endgame, choke democracy with the courts.
Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events, Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica, 9/22/23: “Thomas has attended at least two Koch donor summits, putting him in the extraordinary position of having helped a political network that has brought multiple cases before the Supreme Court.”
Can We Stop China, Russia, Murdoch & the "Putin GOP" From Tearing Down our Democracy? So now we’re all standing largely naked before the coming onslaught of disinformation that is sure to come along with the 2023 and 2024 elections: the lies will be coming fast and furious…Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 9/22/23
Nora Dannehy says Barr meddled in Trump-Russia probe: Speaking at a judicial confirmation hearing, Dannehy ended her silence on quitting the DOJ, Mark Pazniokas, CT Mirror, 9/20/23: “She saw Attorney General William P. Barr as improperly pressuring the investigation for an interim public report ahead of the 2020 presidential election.”
Trump Tells Republicans to Shut Down the Government So He Can Get Away With His Many Alleged Crimes: Always looking out for the American people! Bess Levin, Vanity Fair, 9/21/23
The Shutdown is the Two Santa Clauses Scam Rearing its Ugly Head Again: Hopefully this time Democratic politicians and our media will, finally, call the GOP out on Wanniski’s and Reagan’s Two Santa Clauses scam and put an end to it once and for all…Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 9/20/23: “Republicans have forced two Democratic presidents, and are about to try to force a third, to gut-shoot the Democratic Santa established by FDR.”
Moms for Liberty: ‘Joyful warriors’ or anti-government conspiracists? The 2-year-old group could have a serious impact on the presidential race, Shauna Shames, The Conversation, 9/19/23: “a sixth of each party – a small fraction of the overall population – now selects the nominees. And that sixth is not representative – it is far more opinionated and angry. Moms for Liberty, having organized small, ideological voting armies in swing states, is in the envious position of representing a concentrated and potentially decisive voting bloc.”
Bring Back Countervailing Power: A new ethos of wage boards and worker power would help right the injustices in our economy, Michael Lind, Persuasion, 9/20/23: “Relying on benevolent elites to help the working class out of charitable sentiment is no substitute for worker power.”
How Biased Is the Corporate Media? Ask Auto Workers, Jim Hightower, Lowdown, 9/19/23: “…they regularly slant their reports with corporate terminology, assumptions and viewpoints.”
Media Turns Random Trump Campaign Rally in Detroit Into “Trump Standing With Striking Autoworkers” Headlines: Giving a campaign speech vaguely in the proximity of strikes is not showing support for strikers, Adam Johnson, The Column, 9/22/23: “The worst offender, Wall Street Journal, told readers in its subheadline about Trump’s announcement, that “Republican lawmakers are siding with UAW workers instead of corporations,” which is 100 percent false.”
The media need to cover the climate crisis as seriously as it covered Covid: With some exceptions, the news industry is still not responding to the true scale and danger of global heating, Mark Hertsgaard, Kyle Pope, The Guardian, 9/20/23
Why I don't read modern journalism: Changing our media diet changes our perception of the world, Elle Griffin, The Elysian, 9/18/23: “But the sources of our stress are external. They come from the media, which has, over the course of the last several years, spiraled into something more alarmist than usual—pouring into us every fear that could be unleashed from Pandora’s box and whispering new furies into our ears by the minute. And we dwell on them as if trapped in the tangled limbs of Dante’s inferno.”
America Is Just Now Entering the Age of Tesla: The UAW strike is what happens when the car companies in Detroit start acting like Silicon Valley, Andrew Moseman, The Atlantic, 9/20/23: “If Tesla drags the entire car industry toward the Silicon Valley business model, that may not be a cause for celebration.”
An Age of Austerity is probably on the way: It's not the 2010s anymore, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 9/18/23: “The last 15 years pushed us to imagine what more the U.S. government could do if only it had the political will to open its purse-strings. Unless a productivity boom and/or a return to near-zero interest rates with low inflation saves us from having to make hard choices, the next 15 years will force us to curb our imaginations and put a damper on our fiscal dreams.”
The Everlasting Self
Comes in from a downpour
Shaking water in every direction —
A collaborative condition:
Gathered, shed, spread, then
Forgotten, reabsorbed. Like love
From a lifetime ago, and mud
A dog has tracked across the floor.
—Tracy K. Smith
Science and Environment
Antarctic sea-ice at 'mind-blowing' low alarms experts, Georgina Rannard, Becky Dale, Erwan Rivault BBC News, 9/17/23: “The sea-ice surrounding Antarctica is well below any previous recorded winter level, satellite data shows, a worrying new benchmark for a region that once seemed resistant to global warming.”
It’s not just coral. Extreme heat is weakening entire marine ecosystems in Florida: Anemones, sponges, and jellyfish are bleaching throughout the Everglades amid record temperatures. It's a troubling sign for Florida Bay and beyond, Abigail Geiger, Gabriela Tejeda, Grist, 9/18/23
A saltwater wedge climbing the Mississippi River threatens drinking water: Officials are scrambling in an effort to hold back the encroaching sea and prevent the saltwater wedge from heading toward New Orleans, Brady Dennis, Washington Post, 9/21/23
Methuselah arrived in the US in 1938. She’s now the oldest fish in captivity: The lungfish arrived in San Francisco on a steamship along with 230 other fish. Today, she’s the only living aquatic animal from that vessel, Katherine Gammon, The Guardian, 9/24/23
Road Hazard: Evidence Mounts on Toxic Pollution from Tires: Researchers are only beginning to uncover the toxic cocktail of chemicals, microplastics, and heavy metals hidden in car and truck tires. But experts say these tire emissions are a significant source of air and water pollution and may be affecting humans as well as wildlife, Jim Nelson, Yale Environment 360, 9/19/23
Epigenetics and evolution: ‘the significant biological puzzle’ of sexual orientation: The ‘gay gene’ some touted as explaining widespread homosexuality in humans has not been found. Might epigenetics hold the answer? Benjamin Oldroyd, The Guardian, 9/17/23: “There are three leading hypotheses for the common existence of homosexuality in human populations, one based on kin selection, one on sexually antagonistic alleles, and one on epigenetic inheritance.”
A Medieval French Skeleton Is Rewriting the History of Syphilis: Christopher Columbus was blamed for bringing syphilis to Europe. New DNA evidence suggests it was already there. Maybe both stories are true, Maryn McKenna, Wired, 9/22/23
Fire as medicine: Using fire to manage forests, prevent catastrophic wildfires in the Northwest, Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian, 9/20/23: “Fire is sacred, it’s the giver and taker of life and we need to respect it.”
This Oregon Farmer Is Building a New Model for Indigenous Food and Agriculture: At Sakari Farms, Spring Alaska Schreiner maintains a seed bank, has launched a community kitchen, and teaches Native American youth traditional ecological knowledge, Kate Nelson, Civil Eats, 9/18/23
The twisted story of how bottled water took over the world: In his new book, ‘Unbottled,’ author Daniel Jaffee explores how bottled water’s meteoric rise has exacerbated inequality and intensified pollution, Daniel Jaffee, Fast Company, 9/19/23: “bottlers are essentially double-dipping—receiving low-cost water subsidized by taxpayers and then turning around and selling it back to the public at a significant markup.”
Justice for Neanderthals! What the debate about our long-dead cousins reveals about us: They were long derided as knuckle-draggers, but new discoveries are setting the record straight. As we rethink the nature of the Neanderthals, we could also learn something about our own humanity, Nikhil Krishnan, The Guardian, 9/19/23: “In puzzling over them, we reveal something of ourselves. Why might some of us care so much about creatures so long extinct? No doubt part of the answer is that questions about the Neanderthals serve as proxies for questions about ourselves.”
How electricity could clean up transportation, steel, and even fertilizer: More industries are joining the charge to electrify everything in order to cut emissions.: Casey Crownhart, MIT Technology Review, 9/21/23
A Young Architect’s Designs for the Climate Apocalypse: Pavels Hedström believes that most architecture separates us from nature. He wants to make nonhuman life inescapable, Sam Knight, New Yorker, 9/18/23: “We know deeply that we need systemic change, but we have to make it ourselves.”
We are being poisoned every day, so why do we keep voting for more pollution? Ask a lobbyist: The dirty industries that dominate politics deceive us into accepting dangerous pollutants such as ammonia as part of life, George Monbiot, The Guardian, 9/22/23
The Biden Administration’s Next Big Climate Decision: The liquefied-natural-gas buildout—and fossil-fuel exports—challenge progress on global warming, Bill McKibben, New Yorker, 9/22/23: “If we want to reach net zero by 2050 we do not need any more investments in new oil, gas and coal projects.”
This Is How the World Ends (and Starts Over Again): How Life on Our Planet dramatizes five global extinction events—or six, if you count the current one, Anthony Breznican, Vanity Fair, 9/22/23: New Netflix documentary series Life on Our Planet
Health and Wellness
How AI can help us understand how cells work—and help cure diseases: A virtual cell modeling system, powered by AI, will lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of diseases, argue the cofounders of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg, MIT Technology Review, 9/19/23: “We can start by unlocking the mysteries of our cells, and that can lead to work that helps end many diseases as we know them.”
Crispr Pioneer Jennifer Doudna Has the Guts to Take On the Microbiome: The world-famous biochemist is ready to tackle everything from immune disorders and mental illness to climate change—all by altering microbes in the digestive tract, Jennifer Kahn, Wired, 9/19/23
A Game Plan for Timing Your Flu, Covid and RSV Shots This Fall: Here’s what to consider to maximize your protection, Sumathi Reddy, Wall Street Journal, 9/19/23: “The most important thing, doctors say, is to get vaccinated.”
How inverse vaccines might tackle diseases like multiple sclerosis: Vaccines aimed at dampening the immune response could revolutionize the treatment of autoimmune diseases, Cassandra Willyard, MIT Technology Review, 9/22/23
What Makes Life Tick? Mitochondria May Keep Time for Cells: Every species develops at its own unique tempo, leaving scientists to wonder what governs their timing. A suite of new findings suggests that cells use basic metabolic processes as clocks, Viviane Callier, Quanta, 9/18/23
Dear Mama,
How do I stay progressive as a bureaucrat? How can I sew without depth perception? How do you make a sideways French braid? How do you use an electric drill, and for what? How do you hide your wires? How do you love unconditionally? How do you put a name-dropper in his place? How do you talk to a ghost?— from Young’s Pond, Coriel Gaffney, The ManifestStation
Birds
Galápagos Islands tightens biosecurity as avian flu threatens unique species: Scientists confirm three birds have died from virus as park authorities redouble efforts to protect islands’ endemic birds, Dan Collyns, The Guardian, 9/20/23: “Our main worry is for the endemic species. Their populations are quite small and are restricted to the Galápagos.”
Songbirds That Learn to Make New Sounds Are the Best Problem-Solvers: Birds—and humans—are vocal learners, meaning they can imitate new vocalizations and use them to communicate, Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian, 9/19/23
Meet the 88-Year-Old ‘Unlikely Birder’ On a Quest to Link Two Famed National Parks: A youthful spirit has powered Lowell Young’s decades of advocacy on behalf of birds and habitats, including his contributions to a campaign to create the proposed Range of Light National Monument, Carmen Kohlruss, Audubon, 9/18/23
I paid so much
for wisdom, and look at all of this, look at all I have —
—from “Failed Essay on Privilege,” Elisa Gonzalez
This week’s news is heavily focused on danger: to democracy here in the United States and to the ecology and balance of our planet. In the coming weeks and months, we must work harder than ever to fight the rise of fascism in America and simultaneously, fight for a worldwide commitment to ending our reliance on fossil fuels and transforming the world economy. Don’t give up hope. Do keep on doing everything you can. As Joyce Vance says in her newsletter - “We’re in this together.” Much love to all—David