The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 91, February 6, 2022 (V2 #39)
"Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear."—Hannah Arendt
“You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules.” —Bob Dylan, “When You Gonna Wake Up” (1979)
“Those who seek to ban books are wrong no matter how dangerous books can be.”—Viet Thanh Nguyen
“…overturning elections on the claim that the usurper must defend a nation’s legitimate government is so much a part of authoritarian coups that it is almost a cliché.”—Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 2/4/22
“I used to be disgusted; now I try to be amused.”—Elvis Costello
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
—Margaret Atwood
Climate Everywhere
From the Oldest Forest in Montana, Rick Bass, Orion Magazine, 1/31/22: “I HAD TO GO INTO THE OLD FOREST seventy times before I heard it speak, and then it was only one word, urgency. Each time, I had been listening, hoping I’d hear something, as I walked carefully across the rotting spines of fallen giants, which lay in dizzying geometries atop older fallen giants, which lay upon other now buried giants—still holding their carbon, deep down into the earth, deep down into history, and yet still in service to the living—a sarcophagus of the ancient forest. No place for bulldozers.”
New Report From The Royal Society: “The Online Information Environment” filed by Gary Price, Infodocket, 1/22/22: “The report highlights how online misinformation on scientific issues, like climate change or vaccine safety, can harm individuals and society. It stresses that censoring or removing inaccurate, misleading and false content, whether it’s shared unwittingly or deliberately, is not a silver bullet and may undermine the scientific process and public trust. Instead, there needs to be a focus on building resilience against harmful misinformation across the population and the promotion of a “healthy” online information environment.”
Jurassic politics: Are office-holding Republicans with strong environmental credentials an extinct species? Peter Dykstra, Environmental Health News, 2/6/22
The US lags in the race to build an electric vehicle battery industry: Much of the current supply chain is controlled by China, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 1/31/22
Six Solutions to Battery Mineral Challenges, Amory Lovins, RMI.org, 1/31/22: “discussions of battery materials, or any other supposedly scarce resource, must consider not just simplistic demand projections or worrisome mines but the whole system—end-to-end, linear-to-circular, and fully engaged with innovation, economics, and trade.”
Inside Clean Energy: In the New World of Long-Duration Battery Storage, an Old Technology Holds Its Own: California power companies choose lithium-ion batteries for an eight-hour storage project, passing on some newer options, Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News, 2/3/22
Could small nuclear reactors help protect the climate? They could be deployed more quickly and cheaply than traditional nuclear plants, a researcher says, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 2/2/22
These EVs are cheaper to own than their gas-powered counterparts: Not buying gas saves you quite a bit of money over the lifetime of a car, Adele Peters, Fast Company, 2/1/22
What Can One Teenager Do About Climate Change? Adah Crandall Will Find Out: A teen climate activist in Portland is setting the tone for transportation debates for decades to come with her mission to stop highway expansion. Will anyone listen before it’s too late? Aaron Gordon, Vice, 1/31/22: “The world is a mess right now, adults don’t have their best interest in mind, everyone’s looking out for their own and not for our collective future.”
Greenland lost enough ice in last 2 decades to cover entire US in 1.5 feet of water: The world's largest island is losing its ice cap fast, Brandon Specktor, LiveScience, 2/4/22
Cracking down on methane ‘ultra emitters’ is a quick way to combat climate change, researchers find: Latest study underscores how satellites are exposing emission sources around the globe. ‘It’s a harbinger of what’s to come,’ one expert says, Brady Dennis, Washington Post, 2/3/22
12 reports identify small but steady steps forward in 2022: As with overly ambitious New Years resolutions, the time has come to scale back and downsize one’s realistic climate objectives over the next 11 months, Michael Svoboda, Yale Climate Connections, 2/4/22
Simple tips to fight climate change with your garden: Practices like minimum tillage, cover-crops and composting can make a positive contribution to this major issue of our time, Mark and Ben Cullen, Toronto Star, 2/1/22
Standing Rock withdraws from ongoing environmental assessment of Dakota Access Pipeline, Laurel Sutherland, Monga Bay, 2/2/22
Repeat photography shows climate change impacts on real places: Researcher’s then/now Alaska national parks images show drastic climate change impacts on landscapes over the years, Kristen Pope, Yale Climate Connections, 2/1/22
Science, Culture, Community
On Taking Writing Lessons from Quantum Physics: A Single Story's Many Possible Worlds, Hisham Bustani, LitHub, 2/4/22: “Love is a quantum experience, full of potentialities and possibilities. Love is uncertainty embodied. Passion is anxiety, restlessness, the tension of a possible spark, the crackle of embers catching air, glowing as they are consumed.”
A New Database Reveals How Much Humans Are Messing With Evolution: Some animals and plants are rapidly adapting to our warming, polluted world. How alarming that is depends on your perspective, Amit Katwala, Wired, 2/4/22
Gene variant found in centenarians appears to slow the ageing process: A rare variant of the SIRT6 gene increases DNA repair in human cells, and learning its effects could help to develop anti-ageing drugs, Michael LePage, NewScientist, 1/31/22
Scientists use CRISPR activation method to reveal “Rosetta Stone” of immune cell function: A modified CRISPR-Cas9 system lets researchers activate genes in human cells and study the consequences, Gladstone Institutes, EurekAlert, 2/3/22
How Omicron escapes from antibodies: A computational study shows that dozens of mutations help the virus’ spike protein evade antibodies that target SARS-CoV-2, Anne Trafton, MIT News, 2/1/22
The Future of Epidemic Tracking Is in Your Toilet: Wastewater is a crucial epidemiological tool for tracking Covid-19. It’s only going to get more important as climate change accelerates, Eleanor Cummins, New Republic, 2/3/22
Optimizing Machines Is Perilous. Consider ‘Creatively Adequate’ AI: The future of artificial intelligence needs less data and can tolerate ambiguity, Angus Fletcher, Wired, 1/25/22
Game-changing technology to remove 99% of carbon dioxide from air: UD researchers carbon capture advance could bring environmentally friendly fuel cells closer to market, University of Delaware, EurekAlert, 2/3/22
Excavating the Future: Odilia Romero on How Indigenous Communities Confronted COVID: The Los Angeles-based Zapotec organizer shares how “mutual aid” has always been traditional, Rubén Martínez and Marco Amador, Capital and Main, 2/2/22
The Ohio Organization Rekindling Indigenous Foodways: How ‘Native American street food’ is helping to keep tribal cultures alive, Zeb Larson, Belt Magazine, 1/21/22
Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Partners with Rosetta Stone to Revitalize the Ojibwe Language, Kelsey Turner, Native News Online, 2/3/22
Scientists identify how humans detect the smell of body odour and musk: Surprisingly little is known about the role played by our 400 or so receptors in identifying specific smells, Nicola Davis, The Guardian, 2/4/22
Coronavirus: ‘Stealth Omicron’ more infectious than original strain, Danish study shows: A person with sub-variant BA.2 has a 39 per cent chance of transmitting it to someone in their household within a week, compared to a 29 per cent risk with BA.1., Agence France-Presse, SCMP, 2/1/22
Lost in a Sense
how would this
(my) being
find itself if
being meant "to search
with eyes open against the sun"
—thus blinded
found sight impossible
& being lost
in a sense
of being
the sense of itself
turned upside down
—David Wilk
Follow the Money
Concentration of power is the problem, Mark Hurst, Creative Good, 2/3/22: “It’s no coincidence that the Big Tech companies, as different as they are, have recently converged on the same, single business model of surveillance and control.” (Ed. Note: read the whole article)
The Internet Is Just Investment Banking Now: The internet has always financialized our lives. Web3 just makes that explicit, Ian Bogost, Atlantic, 2/4/22: “Let’s call things what they are: NFTs represent a first step in the securitization of digital assets. They turn digital data into speculative financial instruments.”
The Rundown: Google, Meta and Amazon are on track to absorb more than 50% of all ad money in 2022, Seb Joseph, Ronan Shields, Digiday, 2/4/22
Corporations send large donations to GOP group behind abortion bans and voter suppression, Judd Legum, Tesnim Zekeria, Popular Information, 2/2/22
Kyrsten Sinema courted Republican fossil fuel donors with filibuster stance: Houston fundraiser reveals Democrat’s aggressive efforts to capitalize on her Senate power on matters ranging from climate to taxes, Peter Stone, The Guardian, 2/1/22
The Limits of Privatized Climate Policy: We cannot make the most urgent infrastructural investments of our lifetimes with gentle signals to financial markets. The clearest path forward is to embrace the capacity of the state, Adrienne Buller, Dissent, Winter 2022
How the U.S. Economy Defied Omicron to Add Nearly Half a Million Jobs: More people worked from home, but employers kept hiring, giving the Biden Administration an unexpected political lift, John Cassidy, The New Yorker, 2/4/22
Politics Everywhere
Memo circulated among Trump allies advocated using NSA data in attempt to prove stolen election: The proposal to seize and analyze ‘NSA unprocessed raw signals data’ raises legal and ethical concerns that set it apart from other attempts that have come to light, Josh Dawsey, Rosalind S. Helderman, Emma Brown, Jon Swaine, Jacqueline Alemany, Washington Post, 2/3/22
Biden vs. Trump: The Makings of a Shattering Constitutional Crisis: January 2025 could make January 2021 seem tame by comparison, Bruce Ackerman, Gerard Magliocca, Politico, 2/1/22: “Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — the Disqualification Clause — expressly bars any person from holding “any office, civil or military, under the United States” if he “engaged in insurrection” against the Constitution after previously swearing to uphold it “as an officer of the United States.””
What was he up to? We haven't heard the last of the Voting Machine Plot(s), Lucian K. Truscott IV, Newsletter, 2/4/22: “…it’s beginning to look like we escaped that one by the proverbial hairs on our chinny-chin-chin, doesn’t it?”
Durbin, King and Klobuchar Release Draft Electoral Count Act Reform, Marc Elias, Democracy Docket, 2/1/22. Read the draft text of the bill here.
‘I’m afraid’: Texas butterfly sanctuary forced to close after far-right threats: The nature preserve on the US-Mexico border became a target of rightwing ire after it opposed construction of Trump’s wall, Erum Salam, The Guardian, 2/6/22 (Ed. note: this may be the most disturbing news I read this entire week.)
55 Voices for Democracy: on New Political Alliances, Claus Leggewie, LA Review of Books, 2/3/22: “‘55 Voices for Democracy’ is inspired by the 55 BBC radio addresses Thomas Mann delivered from his home in California to thousands of listeners in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and the occupied Netherlands and Czechoslovakia between October 1940 and November 1945.”
Meet the moms of color from Texas fighting book bans at their kids' schools: The Round Rock Black Parents Association mobilized against calls to remove a book on the history of racist ideas in the U.S. from the school reading list, Tat Bellamy-Walker, NBC News, 1/28/22
After 3 Hours of Joe Rogan, I Have Thoughts: Plus: Neil Young’s Archives, signs of a collapsing economy, and a rude awakening for Facebook, Stephen Levy, Wired, 2/4/22
The Radical Woman Behind “Goodnight Moon”: Margaret Wise Brown constantly pushed boundaries—in her life and in her art, Anna Holmes, The New Yorker, 1/31/22: “Even though her work embraced everyday subjects, it was far from banal.”
Book Bans Are Targeting the History of Oppression: The possibility of a more just future is at stake when young people are denied access to knowledge of the past, Marilisa Jiménez Garcia, The Atlantic, 2/2/22
Art Spiegelman on Maus and free speech: ‘Who’s the snowflake now?’ Since his early days in the underground comix scene, Spiegelman has reveled in ‘saying the unsayable’ and subverting convention, Luke Winkie, The Guardian, 2/5/22
North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its Internet: Disappointed with the lack of US response to the Hermit Kingdom's attacks against US security researchers, one hacker took matters into his own hands, Andy Greenberg, Wired, 2/2/22
The Marxist Who Antagonizes Liberals and the Left: The renowned Black scholar Adolph Reed opposes the politics of anti-racism, describing it as a cover for capitalism, Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker, 1/31/22
Whoopi Goldberg’s American Idea of Race: The “racial” distinctions between master and slave may be more familiar to Americans, but they were and are no more real than those between Gentile and Jew, Adam Serwer, Atlantic, 2/3/22
School vouchers are a ‘slow coup’ of public education, Donald Cohen, In the Public Interest, 2/3/22
Birdland
Plants Face Tough Climate Challenges as Seed-Dispersing Animals Decline: A new study shows how the concerning overlap between the biodiversity and climate crises, Liz Kimbrough, The Revelator, 2/2/22
Duck and goose populations booming in Michigan. Other birds? Not so much, Zahra Ahmad, Bridge Michigan, 2/3/22
Hummingbirds exert fine control over body heat, Pat Leonard, Cornell Chronicle, 2/2/22
What is ‘Bird Flu’? Do I Need to Worry About It? Matt Shipman, NC State News, 2/2/22: “For reasons that still aren’t clear, while these viruses are deadly to chickens and turkeys, they don’t make ducks or other migratory waterfowl sick.”
Books
Olga Tokarczuk’s ‘The Books of Jacob’ is finally here. Now we know why the Nobel judges were so awestruck, Ron Charles, Washington Post, 2/1/22: “Sprawling across a thousand pages decorated with period maps and etchings, the story revolves around a real-life 18th-century Polish mystic named Jacob Frank (1726-1791).” Buy The Books of Jacob
‘Yonder’ is a vital addition to our literature about slavery: Jabari Asim’s novel, a vivid account of the lives of enslaved people, depicts what it took for an entire population to exist in America, Evangeline Lawson, Washington Post, 2/4/22. Buy Yonder
Interview: Andy Hunter on Bookshop.org’s Second Anniversary: Twice developed in a hurry, first for the US and then for the UK, Bookshop.org is gearing up for international expansion over time, Porter Anderson, Publishing Perspectives, 1/27/22
Episode XXIV: “A very empty take on the novel: In this installment, I speak with James Han Mattson. Topics include ignoring his first bad review, investing (or not) in horror, “leech[ing]” on nostalgia, “on the nose” cultural commentary & more, Andrew Lipstein, Thick Skin, 2/2/22
Keep your head and everything will be cool
You didn't have to make me feel like a fool
When I tried to say I feel the way that I do
I want to talk with you
And make it loud and clear
Though you don't care to hear —Todd Rundgren, “Couldn’t I Just Tell You?” (1972)
Many birthdays this coming week! February 8: Happy Birthday, Jules Verne, John Ruskin, Samuel Butler, Kate Chopin, Elizabeth Bishop, Lisel Mueller, John Grisham.
Stay tuned (and alert). As always, there will be more stories to report next week. Always hoping for better days ahead. Thanks for reading and for sending your own news. Be well all. —David