The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 218, July 14, 2024 (V5 #10)
Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.—E.B. White
I belong to no organized party. I’m a Democrat.—Will Rogers
Books, Music, Art, Culture
Shelley Duvall, Star of ‘The Shining’ and ‘Nashville,’ Dies at 75: Her lithesome features and quirky screen presence made her a popular figure in 1970s movies, particularly Robert Altman’s, Clay Risen, NY Times, 7/11/24. DW: I remember her for so much more – “Faerie Tale Theater” was a great series – and every episode is available on YouTube!
Maybe you need to have more fun: "Fun" as essential to human flourishing, Elle Griffin, The Elysian, 7/8/24: “There will still be suffering, but we do not need to live a life of languishing. We can seek out laughter instead.”
What happens when a 79-year-old beginner stares down a piano recital: I’ve been a quarterback and House majority whip. Could I rise to the challenge of performing “Ol’ Man River” in front of an audience? David Bonior, Washington Post, 7/8/24: “I remain undaunted. It is such a joy to be playing. I’ll just keep rolling along.”
The Last Avant-Garde, Alexander Billet, LA Review of Books, 7/11/24. Book review: With and Against: the Situationist International in the Age of Automation by Dominique Routhier. “Almost nowhere does there exist any force insisting that creativity is a radically democratic right, let alone that it can play a role in practically changing the shape of daily life. In the face of all this, is a meaningful revival of the avant-garde possible?”
Overlooked No More: Ursula Parrott, Best-Selling Author and Voice for the Modern Woman: Her writing, from the late 1920s to the late ’40s, about sex, marriage, divorce, child rearing and work-life balance still resonates, Marsha Gordon, NY Times, 7/10/24: “Many of Parrott’s tales are set in New York City and written with the wit, candor and style that is a hallmark of America’s best-known writers of the Jazz Age.” (No paywall)
Finding the Glow Within: What Biology and Fiction Writing Have In Common: on the Pursuit of Open-Ended Questions in Science and Literature, Janie Kim, LitHub, 7/8/24: “In both science and in writing, there is no such thing as useless knowledge.”
How to Tie Knots That Have Tales to Tell: Humans figured out long ago how to turn a length of rope or cord into something both functional and symbolic, John Bucher, Atlas Obscura, 7/10/24: “The Heracles knot was believed by some to possess magical properties that provided protection and strength.”
AI Can’t Replace Teaching, but It Can Make It Better: Even techno-optimists hesitate to say teaching is best left to the bots, but there’s a debate about where to draw the line, Chris Berdick, Wired, 7/10/24: “There’s incredible value in the human relationship component of learning and when you just take humans out of the equation, something is lost.”
Is AI the Bitter End—or the Lucrative Future—of Book Publishing? As the law fights to catch up to Big Tech, the future of books hangs in the balance. Are writers doomed by “the biggest rip-off in creative history” or could AI offer new ways of making a living? Rebecca Ackermann, Esquire, 7/9/24
End of an Era, Sam Kahn, Castalia, 7/11/24: “It’s fairly clear that the Era of Software is coming to an end now — just as the Industrial Revolution came to an abrupt end in the West some time around the 1970s. Growth will happen in some direction, and the way to understand the likeliest direction is to think through what our core identity, and core values, are — and what the current gospel of individuality is likeliest to evolve into.”
Circles ’Neath Your Eyes: The men and women in Lucinda Williams’s songs struggle to turn their injuries into something they can live with, Sam Huber, NY Review of Books, 7/11/24: “Williams’s lovers often fall apart, but she rarely indulges the temptation to do so herself.”
You get defensive at every turn
You’re overly sensitive and overly concerned
Few precious memories, no lullabies
Hollowed out centuries of lies
—from “Sweet Side,” Lucinda Williams
Politics, Technology, Economics
The Attempt on Donald Trump’s Life and an Image That Will Last: The bloodied former President, his fist raised, flanked by an American flag, is already an indelible portrait of our era of political crisis and conflict, Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New Yorker, 7/13/24: “It is an image that captures him as he would like to be seen, so perfectly, in fact, that it may outlast all the rest.”
Cool heads needed as political fringe dwellers spread disinformation after Trump shooting: Partisans on the left and the right are weaponizing the attack and spreading lies faster than journalists can offer facts to counter them, George Chidi, The Guardian, 7/14/24: “Accelerationists are those on the political fringes – right and left – who want a civil war to burn the country to ash so they can start anew from the rubble.…it’s an accelerationist’s wet dream.”
Trump allies immediately blame Biden, Democrats for their rhetoric: Supporters argued that Democratic portrayals of Trump as a threat to democracy led to the violence, though the shooter’s motive was not apparent at the time of their remarks, Michael Scherer, Washington Post, 7/13/24. DW: and now we begin to see how the rest of this election will go.
How to Walk Back from the Brink: What the country—and all of us—must do to minimize the danger that the attempted assassination of Donald Trump will beget further violence, Luke Hallam, Persuasion, 7/14/24: “The work of making sure those things happen begins now—failure to prepare for the coming storm could be the greatest mistake America’s collective institutions ever made.”
Fascism and Fear: The Moment, The Media, The Election, Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, 7/7/24: “The Biden administration is being held to standards, while the previous Trump administration is not; and Biden personally is being held to standards, while Trump as a person is not. This helps to generate a fascist aura.”
Agreeing to Our Harm: We ignore at our peril the rage that animates Trump voters and threatens Biden’s chances this fall, Marilynne Robinson, NY Review of Books, 7/18/24 issue: “The MAGA side really has no politics. Its broad appeal lies in its galvanizing resentment, which is what anger becomes when its legitimacy is not acknowledged.”
Last Chance, USA: Biden, Trump, and the cope that kills, Sarah Kendzior, Newsletter, 7/10/24: “America is a throwaway thing to people like Biden and Trump. They won’t live long enough to see the damage caused by their presidencies. They are ghost town victors, indifferent to mass death, content to rule over the ruins so long as they get to rule. The rest of us just want our country back.”
In Any Other Country: We'd see the coup; here, we only see problematic jurisprudence, Michael Podhorzer, Weekend Reading, 7/9/24: “The Roberts court has completely remade federal elections to advantage Republican interests—This has amounted to decades of election interference—from helping return the former Confederate states to one-party rule, to shielding Trump from legal accountability before ballots are cast in November.”
We Now Know What Really Happened in Atlanta: Media lied to voters about the cause of President Biden’s subpar debate performance. The lie—described here in full—is unforgivable, and was intended to chill discussion of Trump’s cognitive decline, Seth Abramson, Proof, 7/10/24: “…there’s a massive body of literature and videography that carefully chronicles new evidence of cognitive decline from Donald Trump, and it has by and large—if not entirely—been ignored by major media over the last year…”
As a crisis counselor, I have this advice for President Biden: Do not rely on family and close friends for advice. And don’t forget what you’ve always stood for, Dan McGinn, Washington Post, 7/11/24: “You can’t succeed by telling the public to ignore what they know or sincerely believe.”
Why is Congress filled with old people? Lots of old representatives and senators in this building; very few in Congress are young, Charlie Hunt, The Conversation, 7/11/24: “…younger potential candidates for Congress face a steeper climb and must make bigger sacrifices than older candidates do.”
U.S. Media and the 2024 Election: New coverage models are urgently needed for an authoritarian-democratic face-off, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, 7/10/24: "The times demand that we liberate ourselves from the old conventions about journalism.”—Professor Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Biden is big news, but that’s not an excuse for misleading Trump coverage, Jennifer Schulze, Heartland Signal, 7/11/24: “Reporters, by now, should know better than to repeat Donald Trump’s statements without the context that reveals them for the lies they (usually) are.”
How Trump played the media on abortion, Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, Popular Information, 7/11/24: “… the media is allowing Trump to create two realities: one for swing voters and one for anti-abortion activists.”
Dear NY Times: Our Founders Explain Why the Press Must Defend Democracy: From the founding of our republic, protecting the power of the press to call out anti-democratic behavior has been a firewall, protecting our form of government. It is their job, Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 7/10/24
The Heritage Foundation is a Threat to Democracy: A Clear and Present Danger, Jess Piper, View from Rural Missouri, 7/8/24: “Project 2025 already has a head-start in states like Missouri. We have been running the pilot for years.”
Pro-Trump Christian extremists use scripture to justify violent goals: As Donald Trump is deemed a “spiritual warrior,” extremism researchers warn of the menace embedded in Christian nationalist rhetoric, Hannah Allam, Washington Post, 7/13/24
Inside Ziklag, the Secret Organization of Wealthy Christians Trying to Sway the Election and Change the Country, Andy Kroll, Nick Surgey, ProPublica, 7/13/24: “A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.”
Democrats don’t just need a new candidate. They need a reckoning: Democrats will be impotent messengers on democracy as long as they remain beholden to the feudal culture this crisis has exposed, Osita Nwanevu, The Guardian, 7/8/24: “The Democratic party is governed less by vision than by fear.”
Why researchers fear the Gaza death toll could reach 186,000: War doesn’t just kill people through direct violence. Malnutrition, healthcare shortages and unsanitary conditions inevitably follow, Mona Chalabi, The Guardian, 7/12/24
Lashing Out: Understanding Russia's attacks on Ukrainian civilians, Lawrence Freedman, Comment is Freed, 7/14/24: “…it is designed to make conditions unbearable so the government is put under pressure to capitulate or at least seek negotiations on unfavourable terms.”
I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds
and a dead child dragging his shattered black
face off the edge of my sleep
—from “Power,” Audre Lorde
Science, Environment
Got climate anxiety? Taking action can be the right medicine: “Being part of the solution is psychologically empowering,” says therapist Leslie Davenport, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 7/12/24
Forty Acres and a Sense of Hope: Sunshine on a Cloudy Week, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 7/12/24: “If you grow an acre of corn, it will produce 900 gallons of ethanol, which will get you about 25,000 miles for a Ford F-150 pickup…but let’s say we put solar on that same acre. It will produce enough electricity every year to drive my Lightning 550,000 miles.”
Choking on the Cloud: The Ecocidal Revelations of “AI,” Patrick Nathan, Entertainment, Weakly, 7/9/24: “…all along, every time we’ve saved a photo to the cloud or uploaded a new TikTok or bought a new iPhone, we’ve been wasting fresh water, adding more carbon to the atmosphere, endangering workers overseas, and enriching the corporations who’ve made it fun for us to destroy our planet and put ourselves and our peers out of work.”
Over half of Clayoquot Sound’s iconic forests are now protected — here’s how First Nations and B.C. did it: The Ahousaht and Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations will now manage 760 square kilometres of old-growth conservancies with the help of philanthropic funding, Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood, Narwhal, 7/8/24: “Clayoquot Sound is a carbon storage and sequestration powerhouse, containing some of the last remaining old-growth stands on Vancouver Island.”
As climate change alters lakes, tribes and conservationists fight for the future of spearfishing, Melina Walling, John Locher, APNews, 7/9/24: “Spearfishing connects many Indigenous people in the northern Great Lakes region to their ancestors and to a sense of shared responsibility for the land, which is why parents, family members, local leaders and community organizations are so invested in teaching the next generation.”
Horseshoe Crabs Have Been Hiding Out in the Marsh: Scientists know so much, and yet so little, Lydia Larsen, Hakai, 7/10/24: “…in addition to their ecological role, horseshoe crabs are vital to the biomedical industry, which uses their blue blood to test vaccines, drugs, and medical devices for certain toxins fatal to humans.”
A Mammoth First: 52,000-Year-Old DNA, in 3-D: A “fossil chromosome” preserves the structure of a woolly mammoth’s genome — and offers a better grasp of how it once worked, Siobhan Roberts, NY Times, 7/11/24 (No paywall)
A rare detailed analysis of travel reveals the jumbo-sized emissions impact of longer trips: Researchers also devised a new metric to assess which travel shifts offer the biggest climate gain for the behavioral-change pain, Sarah DeWeerdt, Anthropocene, 7/9/24: “…initiatives to reduce emissions from transportation should target long trips rather than just focusing on everyday commutes and errands as is more commonly the case.”
Curb ‘stupid plastics’ and stop industry BS: urgent actions to prevent a plastic crisis: The worst of microplastics is yet to come. Here’s what we need to do now to begin mitigating the wide-ranging harms, Adrienne Matei, The Guardian, 7/9/24: “…the most fundamental and far-reaching step that must be taken to contain the global plastics crisis is to impose a global cap on plastic production.”
Bioplastics are inadequately defined, poorly regulated, and potentially toxic: “These bioplastics just aren’t ready for primetime,” Cami Ferrell, Environmental Health News, 7/11/24: “The consumer should know the source of where the biobased materials are coming from…”
Efforts to Build Climate Resilience Do Not Protect Human Health: The Department of Health and Human Services’ resilience policy undermines efforts to prevent climate disaster, David Introcaso, Undark, 7/11/24: “Resilience fails to appreciate that harms to human health caused by the climate crisis are innumerable and unrelenting, and potentially impact everyone, everywhere, always.”
America’s Aging Dams Are a Catastrophe Waiting to Happen: Climate change presents a growing threat to the nation’s nearly 92,000 dams, many of which are more than 100 years old, as heavy rainfall, flooding, and other forms of extreme weather become more common and severe, Kristoffer Tigue, Wired, 7/13/24
AI's Energy Demands Are Out of Control. Welcome to the Internet's Hyper-Consumption Era: Generative artificial intelligence tools, now part of the everyday user experience online, are causing stress on local power grids and mass water evaporation, Reece Rogers, Wired, 7/11/24
Batteries Are So Back, Lucy Dean Stanton, The Lever, 7/13/24: “The U.S. battery market is on track for its best year yet — a positive sign for the green energy transition, since batteries improve reliability and expand the availability of renewable energy.”
I Went to Death Valley to Experience 129 Degrees: Sweating through one of the hottest days in history, Ross Andersen, The Atlantic, 7/11/24: “There isn’t much atmospheric cover, and July sunlight slams down into the valley, unimpeded, for 14 hours a day.”
La Niña is coming. Here’s how it could change the weather: Some La Niña impacts may be imminent. The pattern is known for fueling Atlantic tropical storm activity, Scott Dance, Washington Post, 7/11/24: “La Niña is a global climate pattern in which cool waters from deep in the eastern Pacific Ocean well up to the surface, creating a pool of cooler-than-normal waters along the equator in the central and eastern Pacific. At the same time, stronger-than-normal tradewinds blow across the Pacific from east to west, blowing warm surface waters toward Asia and allowing those colder waters to rise up in the east.” (No paywall)
How America’s Fastest Swimmers Use Math to Win Gold: Number theorist Ken Ono is teaching Olympians to swim more efficiently, Jordana Cepelewicz, Quanta, 7/10/24: “If you take the swimming out of it, we have Newton’s laws of motion. Those are the equations that we work with.”
another affair to have been kept
and gazed back on
when you had slept
to have been stored
as a squirrel will a nut, and half
forgotten,
there were so many, many
from the newly fallen.
—from “The Newly Fallen,” Ed Dorn
Health, Wellness
Small investments in nutrition could make the world brainier: Many pregnant women and babies are malnourished—and not just in poor countries, Bugasan Norte, The Economist, 7/11/24: “From the third trimester to the second birthday, a million synapses a second are formed in a well-nourished brain.”
Birds
UC biologist documents ecological disaster one bird at a time: Ornithologist says bird populations are disappearing in the United States, Michael Miller, University of Cincinnati News, 7/10/24: “Nearly 1 in 10 species in the United States are listed as threatened or in danger of extinction.”
Maine's endangered plovers and other shorebirds weather climate change, Peter McGuire, WBUR, 7/10/24: “What's good for the beaches is good for the birds; and vice versa.”
The Best Birding Hotspot in Every State, Kaitlin Stainbrook, Birds & Blooms, 7/8/24: “Go birding across America—just grab a pair of binoculars and hit the road.”
staying up all night, notice the moon and its macabre signal
and hemp vapor tents on the horizon
walk upside down in the footprints of the living
—from “Rite,” Anne Waldman
We are plainly living in a time of chaos – this week, yesterday, another example of the craziness that is upon us. Right now, now— it’s time to organize ourselves and be active. Dream the future we want and need. If you have ideas to share, send them!
I say this every week because I really mean it — 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 your own news. Hearing from you makes this all worthwhile.
Above all, stay well; share love; work for good. We need each other, now more than ever.
Love always—David