The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces Issue 136, December 18, 2022 (V3 #32)
“If you go home with someone and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ‘em.”—John Waters
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”—Arthur C. Clarke
“Dreaming back thru life, Your time—and mine accelerating toward Apocalypse”—Allen Ginsberg (Kaddish)
I asked: what did they call you back there?
You told it to me, that name:
a glare as of ashes coated it—
From where the rose is you came.
—from “Where There’s Ice,” Paul Celan/translated by Pierre Joris
Politics
Onslaught of new abortion restrictions looms in reddest of states: New state legislative sessions likely to bring fresh efforts to restrict, penalize or altogether ban the procedure, Poppy Noor, The Guardian, 12/13/22
Conservative donors pour ‘dark money’ into case that could upend US voting law: Groups submitting amicus briefs to supreme court case in support of Republican lawmakers received $90m in anonymous donations, Peter Stone, The Guardian, 12/16/22
The Supreme Court Needs a Code of Conduct: Falling trust in the high court is a threat its authority, Isaac Saul, Persuasion, 12/16/22
The Fed Keeps Throttling the Economy: Powell’s astonishingly ignorant response to easing inflation pressures, Robert Kuttner, American Prospect, 12/14/22
Ex-Twitter head of safety reportedly flees Bay Area home amid Musk attacks, Joshua Bote, SFGate, 12/12/22
What social media regulation could look like: Think of pipelines, not utilities, Theodore J. Kury, The Conversation, 12/15/22
Uncertainty, Social Media, and the Radicalization of the US: A confluence of factors is leading people in the nation to gravitate toward extremist views, Thor Benson, Wired, 12/12/22
We’re witnessing the brain death of Twitter: An analysis of Musk’s tweets shows him at the center of conversations once kept on the fringes of Twitter, Abby Ohlheiser, MIT Technology Review, 12/15/22
How food became a weapon in America’s culture war: First came the politics of right-wing grievance. Then came the new foodie culture. Together, they combined to create one toxic food fight, Brent Cunningham, Food & Environment Reporting Network, 12/12/22
A Fast-Growing Network of Conservative Groups Is Fueling a Surge in Book Bans: Some groups are new, some are longstanding. Some are local, others national. Over the past two years, they have become vastly more organized, well funded, effective — and criticized, Elizabeth A. Harris, Alexandra Alter, NY Times, 12/12/22 (Gift article, no paywall)
Kavanaugh parties with the far right, Judd Legum, Tesnim Zekeria, Popular Information, 12/14/22
The Childish Drama of Elon Musk: Yet again, an important part of the public square is controlled by a narcissistic toddler, Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 12/16/22: “He has purchased an important and influential piece of the public square not to enhance public debate, but to punish people who annoy him.”
The internet wants to be fragmented: Throwing the whole world into a single room together doesn't work, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 12/16/22: “the internet was an escape from the real world. Now the real world is an escape from the internet.”
Brittney Griner and the Role of Race in Diplomacy: Griner’s release recalls the lessons of the effort to free Robert Goodman, an African American Navy navigator, from Syria, Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker, 12/17/22
There you go again
Finding brilliant ways to make things harder
Are we smarter alone or in this endless Stockholm syndrome?
—from “By Any Means,” Andrew Bird
Books and Culture
The Day I Got Stamped: Hold the licking and sticking jokes, please, Margaret Atwood, In the Writing Burrow, 12/15/22: “Dear friends and family, well-wishers, and those who intend to make fun of me for being on a stamp: thank you for being here, and for being in my life.
Nurturing, healing, love: How Jesse Lewis’ final chalkboard message shaped a social movement after Sandy Hook, Taylor Hartz, Hartford Courant, 12/13/22
AI Comes for the Writers: It’s long been assumed that truck drivers’ jobs would be first on the chopping block. Not anymore, McCaffrey Blauner, The Nation, 12/12/22: “Fool around with the chatbot for a few minutes, which is fun and easy to use, and it should become very clear that many of us who make our livings from writing are in grave danger of losing our jobs.”
Current Artists Boomers Will Love, Brooke Luna, CultureSonar, 12/9/22: The Struts, Lola, Greta Van Fleet, Larkin Poe, Kingfish
The Wild Future of Artificial Intelligence: “It’s going to be fascinating to see how people incorporate this second brain into their job,” Derek Thompson says, Isabel Fattal, The Atlantic, 12/12/22
Amazon's heroic phase is over, Tim Carmody, The Amazon Chronicles, 12/12/22: “But this isn't just a development that's unique to Amazon. It's playing out all across the many sectors in which Amazon operates — which means it's playing out all across our world.”
Batman, Designer of Buildings: A Twin Cities architect fulfills his destiny as a superhero to patients at Gillette Children’s hospital in St. Paul, Chris Hudson, Enter, 12/15/22
Shooting Shakespeare with Jean-Luc Godard: The actress and writer recalls working with French cinema’s enfant terrible, Molly Ringwald, New Yorker, 12/12/22: “The author played Cordelia in Godard’s surreal 1987 adaptation of “King Lear.”
Sounds of revolution: A Yale scholar gives unheralded musicians their due: Yale’s Daphne Brooks discusses her multi-award-winning book “Liner Notes for the Revolution” and the overlooked Black women musicians it documents, Susan Gonzales, Yale Today, 12/14/22 Book: Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound
How Cambodian women are using theatre to speak out against domestic abuse: One in five women in Cambodia report experiencing domestic abuse – now a theatre group in Battambang is producing shows that help survivors talk about what is still a taboo subject, Fiona Kelliher, Yut You, Pogn Sorphorn, The Guardian, 12/13/22
As the Climate Changes, Climate Fiction Is Changing With It: In four new novels set in the present and future, writers confront the contradictions of our climate-addled age, Kiley Bense, Inside Climate News, 12/17/22
SoCal’s big ‘poetry Coachella’ is back — and more sprawling and diverse than ever, Jireh Deng, LA Times, 12/15/22: Beyond Baroque!
I say fools in love are zeroes
I should know
I should know because this fool’s in love again
—from “Fools in Love,” Joe Jackson
Science and Environment
Researchers say time is an illusion. So why are we all obsessed with it? Geoff Brumfiel, NPR, 12/16/22: “In places where gravity is very strong, time as we understand it can break down completely.”
U.S. announces milestone on fusion energy, sparking hopes for clean power: Biden administration announces major advancement in quest to mimic the sun’s nuclear reactions, Joel Achenbach, Evan Halter, Washington Post, 12/13/22
Wastewater could be the secret to eco-friendly fertilizer: By capturing nitrogen from wastewater, we can avoid the energy-intensive production of ammonia, Carla Delgado, Popular Science, 12/13/22
In the Water-Starved West, Can Ancient Stewardship Practices Save the Soil? A century of agriculture is threatening ancient aquifers in Oregon’s high desert. And the Indigenous farming practices that might heal the earth are being squeezed out, Astra Lincoln, Outside, 12/15/22
‘It made my heart sing’: finding herbs and medicine in the Bronx food forest: The Bronx River Foodway, the only legal place to forage in New York, celebrates the end of a season, Meka Boyle, The Guardian, 12/16/22
Forest Equity: What Indigenous People Want from Carbon Credits: To Indigenous leader Levi Sucre Romero, carbon credit markets have failed to respect Indigenous people and their key role in protecting their lands. In an e360 interview, he talks about how carbon brokers have taken advantage of local communities and why that must change, Yale Climate 360, 12/15/22
Eight states, 30 cities team up to reduce flooding threat along the Mississippi River: They’ve partnered with Ducks Unlimited to restore more than 60 wetlands that will hold floodwaters during storms, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 12/15/22
New Jersey wants to restore 10,000 acres of ‘fairy-tale’ forest: Rising seas threaten to kill the state’s dwindling Atlantic white cedar forests, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 12/14/22
A novel sodium-sulphur battery has 4 times the capacity of lithium-ion batteries: The new sodium-sulfur batteries are also environmentally friendly, driving the clean energy mission forward at a low cost, Jijo Malayil, Interesting Engineering, 12/9/22
Biodiversity: Can we set aside a third of our planet for nature? Helen Briggs, Victoria Gill, BBC, 12/14/22: “The aim is to reach this goal by 2030 and conserve forests and other vital ecosystems in order to restore the natural world.”
Keystone Pipeline has history of spills, warnings and fines. Kansas spill is largest yet: 14,000 barrels spilled into creek and farmland; 2,598 barrels of oil and water removed as of Monday, Allison Kite, Kansas Reflector, 12/13/22
Researchers chart a path to carbon-negative plastic: A new study shows this feat is possible, but will require more than recycling or a price on carbon, Sara DeWeerdt, Anthropocene, 12/13/22
From IUDs to Heart Disease: How Doctors Dismiss Women’s Pain, Several studies support the claim that gender bias in medicine routinely leads to a denial of pain relief for female patients for a range of health conditions, Lindsey Bever, Washington Post, 12/13/22
Researchers Double-Play Cancer Clinical Trials: A pair of new approaches achieves unprecedented results in rectal, breast cancer, Kenneth Miller, Discover, 12/11/22
Neuroscientists have created a mood decoder that can measure depression: Researchers implanted 14 electrodes into the brains of volunteers with depression. One says it saved his life, Jessica Hamzelou, MIT Technology Review, 12/14/22
The World-Changing Race to Develop the Quantum Computer: Such a device could help address climate change and food scarcity, or break the Internet. Will the U.S. or China get there first? Stephen Witt, New Yorker, 12/12/22
‘Space hurricanes’ swirling over the Earth surprise scientists: Cyclone-like auroras near the North Pole, dubbed space hurricanes, can transfer large amounts of energy from the sun to Earth’s upper atmosphere, Kasha Patel, Washington Post, 12/15/22
Snakes have clitorises: scientists overcome ‘a massive taboo around female genitalia:’ Researchers say previous studies mistook the organs on female snakes as scent glands or under-developed versions of penises, Donna Lu, The Guardian, 12/13/22
Teeth suggest ancestors of diplodocus may have eaten meat: Analysis shows ‘earliest members of two main veggie dinosaur lineages were not exclusively herbivorous, Nicola Davis, The Guardian, 12/16/22
Russian research into prehistoric viruses sparks fears of new pandemic, Marc Bennetts, The Times (UK), 12/16/22: “Scientists at the Vector research centre in Russia’s Novosibirsk region are analysing the remains of mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses and other Ice Age animals to identify and revive prehistoric viruses, also known as paleoviruses.”
How the Brain Distinguishes Memories From Perceptions: The neural representations of a perceived image and the memory of it are almost the same. New work shows how and why they are different, Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta, 12/14/22
Unearthing the Original Mediterranean Diet: Archaeologist Dimitra Mylona’s odyssey to reveal the Mediterranean Sea’s lost bounty,Paul Greenberg, Hakai, 12/13/22
in us, says an Arrernte elder, not a dream
like a fairytale dream, the presence of place
where knowledge begins celestial fires
what has happened and still happens
—from “[Early lexicographers and missionaries]” Jeffrey Yang
Birds
The Intimate Relationship Between Pinyon Jays and Piñon Pines Is Unraveling: Drought, beetle infestations, and warming temperatures have pushed both species into a snowballing decline. Scientists are working to revive them, Christina Selby, Audubon, Winter 2022
Planned wind farm told it will need to shut down for five months a year to protect parrots, Anmar Frangoul, CNBC, 12/16/22
Florida environmentalists want feds to intervene in Skyway Fishing Pier bird snags: Environment groups claim state agencies haven’t done enough to prevent entanglements. Anglers say newly proposed rules go too far, Max Chesnes, Tampa Bay Times, 12/15/22
Interior Dept. Issues Strategy to Save Hawaiian Forest Birds, Interior Department, The Mirage, 12/16/22: “Hawaiʻi’s forest birds are facing an extinction crisis, in part because rising temperatures caused by climate change have enabled mosquitoes to reach high-elevation areas that were once sanctuaries for these birds.”
Birds are falling dead and littering Outer Banks beaches. Don’t touch them, park says, Mark Price, News & Observer, 12/14/22
Shorebirds return to Sanibel, Captiva at record numbers post-Ian, Tom Bayles, WLRN, 12/13/22
Wild Georgia: Kinglets assume title of state’s tiniest birds in winter, Charles Seabrook, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 12/16/22
My one last throw . . .
A stone to try this basin of iced rain,
the tarn’s soundboard struck accelerando
to scatter, for luck, a kerfuffle of bird notes—
and win a love song from the earth’s deep cold.
—from “Water like a Stone,” Angela Leighton, New Yorker, 12/12/22
Tomorrow (12/19) we celebrate the birthday of Jean Genet: “My heart's in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand's in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught.”
I enjoy all of the searching and reading that goes into this weekly compilation. But I must admit that the choices I must make to limit the length of this newsletter so it will actually be consumable are exhausting. There are just too many important stories I have to cut. I keep promising myself to make each issue shorter and include more images and complete poems instead of snippets, but then I am faced with leaving out too many stories I need to share. Thanks for putting up with this endless supply of reading material that no one else has time to explore!
It is shocking to realize that there are only two more issues to come in 2022. It’s going to be a busy couple of weeks. Be well all and much love—David