The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 145, February 19, 2023 (V3 #40)
What’s becoming clearer over time is that the Trump-era GOP is hoping to use its electoral dominance of the red states, the small-state bias in the Electoral College and the Senate, and the GOP-appointed majority on the Supreme Court to impose its economic and social model on the entire nation—with or without majority public support.—Ron Brownstein
Books and Culture
Forensic study finds Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was poisoned: The toxin clostridium botulinum was in his body when he died in 1973, days after Chile’s military coup, Sam Jones, John Bartlett, The Guardian, 2/14/23
The world is bluer and of the earth
at night, when I sleep
enormous, within your small hands.
—from “Finale,” tr. by William O’Daly
Go Ahead and Ban My Book: To those who seek to stop young people from reading The Handmaid’s Tale: Good luck with that. It’ll only make them want to read it more, Margaret Atwood, The Atlantic, 2/12/23
Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive: Augustus Gloop now ‘enormous’ instead of ‘fat’, Mrs Twit no longer ‘ugly’ and Oompa Loompas are gender neutral, Hayden Vernon, The Guardian, 2/18/23: “Any changes made have been small and carefully considered.” (hahaha)
What Poets Know That ChatGPT Doesn’t: There’s a reason the AI writes pretty awful verse, Walt Hunter, The Atlantic, 2/13/23: “Ian Bogost suggests that ChatGPT produces “an icon of the answer … rather than the answer itself.””
How Huey P. Newton’s Early Intellectual Life Led Him To Activism: On the Making of a Modern American Revolutionary, Mark Whitaker, LitHub, 2/13/23. Book: Saying it Loud: 1966—The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement
Different strokes: the forgotten women of abstract expressionism: A new exhibition highlights 80 unsung female artists from the grouping that made stars of Rothko and Pollock. But does adding them to the canon deflect from the sexism that stymied their careers? Gabrielle Schwarz, The Guardian, 2/16/23
Lunch with Tim McCarver February 1987, David Lehman, Best American Poetry, 2/17/23: “Tim may have been the most artistic play-by-play man this side of Vin Scully.”
On Beyoncé, Okechukwu Nzelu, Granta, 2/16/23: “Far from being grasping or appropriative, Renaissance gives back, by reminding Black queer people what it’s like to be in our most sacred spaces.”
Trugoy the Dove, co-founder of hip-hop group De La Soul, dies at 54, Praveena Somasundaram, Kim Bellware, Washington Post, 2/12/23
All those in favor take a big step (big step)
True to the Soul, we'll never back-step (back-step)
In sense to that, we don't half-step (half-step)
Just as a reminder from the last step (last step)
Negative ones are lost in footsteps (footsteps)
—from “Change in Speak”, De La Soul, written by David Jolicoeur / Kelvin Mercer / Patrick Patterson / Paul Huston / Steve Scipio / Vincent Mason
Politics
Gerontocracy: the exceptionally old political class that governs the US: Joe Biden and members of Congress are increasingly long in the tooth – and more and more out of step with a much younger US public, David Smith, The Guardian, 2/19/23
UPDATE: College Board scrubs website to cover up deceptions about AP African American Studies course, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 2/16/23: “The College Board's apparent effort to appease right-wing critics has backfired.”
Morning Digest: Our new data shows just how out-of-whack the Senate is, Staff, Daily Kos, 2/16/23: “Minority rule in the Senate has led to minority rule in the Supreme Court—with profound consequences.” (Ed. note: it is long past time to reform the inequitable Electoral College and the Senate – let’s make DC and Puerto Rico states, or add Senators to big states. Or both. The current alignment is absurd and oppresive to the majority of us.)
Inside the push for a nationwide ban on abortion medication, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 2/13/23: “So if mifepristone has been used safely for more than two decades, what is the legal case for the courts to ban it? There isn't much of one. But Fitch, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, and their allies have a real shot of success anyway. Why? Because of a radical Trump-appointed federal judge named Matthew Kacsmaryk.”
Rediscovering Our Shared American Values: What I learned on my journey through small-town America, the military, tech startups, and elite universities, Ed Warren, Persuasion, 2/13/23: “Americans who disagree strongly over hot-button issues demonstrate nearly indistinguishable alignment when asked about core values such as equality, liberty, and progress. It turns out that, for all our differences, most Americans share a worldview of equal rights, personal freedom, and social investment.”
The Real Elitists Are at Fox News: Republicans and their media enablers despise ordinary Americans, Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 2/17/23: “Fox’s cynical fleecing of its viewers is an expression of titanic elitism, the sort that destroys reality in the minds of ordinary people for the sake of fame and money.”
Twitter exec says 'hundreds of thousands' of Russian disinformation accounts still active on Twitter: Twitter's former head of Trust and Safety told Congress that "counterfeit" Russian accounts targeting the US are still active as part of an "ongoing campaign,” Caroline Orr Bueno, Weaponized, 2/12/23
Will the “Culture War” Fascists Win? Will democracy survive in this land of its modern birth? Will we take seriously the threat of those who proudly called themselves “Cultural Warriors?” Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 2/15/23
Is the US going to stand by while Israel becomes an autocracy? There is shockingly little debate about the assaults on democracy happening in Israel right now, Jan-Werner Müller, The Guardian, 2/14/23
Mitch McConnell offered a debt-ceiling fix in 2011. We should do it now, Jeff Merkley, Tim Kaine, Washington Post, 2/14/23: “Congress still had oversight, but the McConnell plan took the weaponization of the debt ceiling off the table.”
The Wildly Misleading Inflation Numbers: The Consumer Price Index gets the story of housing costs backwards, Robert Kuttner, American Prospect, 2/15/23
Revealed: the hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections: Mastermind Tal Hanan claims covert involvement in 33 presidential elections, Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Manisha Ganguly, David Pegg, Carole Cadwalladr, Jason Burke, The Guardian, 2/14/23
Private Eyes: The surveillance economy has all but eliminated Americans’ ability to be “let alone,” Sue Halpern, NY Review of Books, 3/9/23 issue: “… technologies are human inventions, and the ones that are used to violate private spaces and personal lives require human agency.”
Decoupling is not deglobalization: "Protectionism vs. free trade" is not a good way of thinking about the changes facing the world economy, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 2/15/23: “Now, one thing to remember here is that there’s more to human welfare than money.”
How K-pop fans are shaping elections around the globe: BTS Army and other K-pop fandoms are using the strategies they perfected by promoting their favorite bands to get political, Soo Youn, MIT Technology Review, 2/16/23
Over 200 New York Times Contributors Condemn Paper’s Anti-Trans Coverage in Open Letter: “There is no rapt reporting on the thousands of parents who simply love and support their children, or on the hardworking professionals at the New York Times enduring a workplace made hostile by bias — a period of forbearance that ends today,” it reads, James Factora, Them, 2/15/23
What the Supreme Did to America When They Legalized Political Bribery: It’s hard to overstate how much damage these corrupt rulings by Republicans on the Court — from Buckley and Bellotti in 1976/1978 to Citizens United in 2010 — have done to American democracy, Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 2/16/23: “In 1978 … Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled in their Bellotti decision that corporations giving money to politicians — essentially bribing them — was the same thing as your First Amendment-protected right to free speech.”
Russia draining a Ukrainian reservoir is a reminder that water can be a weapon in a warming world: Attacks on water supplies are an ancient war tactic, but climate change is making water’s role in armed conflicts more likely, David Levitan, Grid, 2/15/23
China must stop its coal industry: One of the world's biggest political-economic problems, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 2/16/23
Selfless—that was the proposition. Smiling and moving instantly
there was no other purpose than that which brought them there,
to be in a particular place.
—from “The Test of Fantasy,” Joanne Kyger
Environment and Science
There were more toxic chemicals on train that derailed in Ohio than originally reported, data shows: Among the substances were ethylene glycol monobutyl ether and isobutylene, Julia Jacobo, ABCNews, 2/13/23
The EPA has disclosed additional, concerning chemicals released during the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio: They include multiple carcinogens and chemicals that are toxic to aquatic life, Kristina Marusic, Environmental Health News, 2/14/23
How dangerous was the Ohio chemical train derailment? An environmental engineer assesses the long-term risks, Andrew J. Whelton, The Conversation, 2/15/23: “The main concerns now are the contamination of homes, soil and water, primarily from volatile organic compounds and semivolatile organic compounds, known as VOCs and SVOCs.”
Tracing the path of toxic ‘forever chemicals’ inside the body, Gabrielle Emanuel, WBUR, 2/16/23: “Use of PFAS is so widespread that nearly every American has detectable levels of these human-made chemicals in their blood.” (Ed. note: unwelcome guests who never leave.)
Hidden Hydrogen: Does Earth hold vast stores of a renewable, carbon-free fuel? Eric Hand, Science, 2/16/23: “We have the concept, we have the tools, the geology. … We only need people able to invest.”
Could This Mobile, Solar-Powered Livestock Barn Reshape the Corn Belt?: The ‘stock cropper’ method—raising chickens, hogs, and sheep between rows of grains—promises much-needed change to the U.S. farm landscape. Now it’s on the verge of scaling up, Twilight Greenaway, Civil Eats, 2/13/23
Should your next car be electric—or no car at all? The road to decarbonization hinges on getting the incentives right, Mark Harris, Anthropocene, 2/16/23
Eric Schmidt Is Building the Perfect AI War-Fighting Machine: The former Google CEO is on a mission to rewire the US military with cutting-edge artificial intelligence to take on China. Will it make the world safer? Will Knight, Wired, 2/13/23
"I am Bing, and I am evil:” Microsoft's new AI really does herald a global threat, Eric Hoel, Intrinsic Perspective, 2/16/23: “Now a third threat to humanity looms, one presciently predicted mostly by chain-smoking sci-fi writers: that of artificial general intelligence (AGI).”
Long COVID Now Looks like a Neurological Disease, Helping Doctors to Focus Treatments: The causes of long COVID, which disables millions, may come together in the brain and nervous system, Stephani Sutherland, Scientific American, 2/15/23
How do pandemics begin? There's a new theory — and a new strategy to thwart them, Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR, 2/15/23: "We probably have novel viruses in North America infecting people who work a lot with animals, especially domestic animals. We're just missing them because we don't often have the tools to pick them up."
Before The Last of Us, I was part of an international team to chart the threat of killer fungi. This is what we found, Justin Beardsley, The Conversation, 2/17/23: “With few drugs to treat major fungal infections, and no vaccines on the horizon, the potential harm caused by fungal infections have raised alarms at the highest levels of public health.”
‘Not an object to be bartered,’ the Rio Grande is lifeblood for the land: As New Mexico’s largest river dries, pueblos work to preserve it — and to establish their rights, Danielle Prokop, SourceNM, 2/13/23
Mono Lake Tribe Seeks to Assert Its Water Rights in Call For Emergency Halt of Water Diversions to Los Angeles: The Kootzaduka’a says the state water board should live up to its recently adopted environmental justice promises to save their cultural and natural heritage, Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News, 2/14/23
Climate change takes toll on traditional Ojibwe wild rice harvest: Extreme weather events, including droughts and heavy rain, are making it more difficult to carry out wild rice harvests in the Upper Midwest, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 2/15/23
A Robot Finds More Trouble Under the Doomsday Glacier: Underneath thousands of feet of Thwaites Glacier’s solid ice, a bot filmed peculiar features, where melting is much faster. It’s an ominous sign for rising sea levels, Matt Simon, Wired, 2/15/23
These startups hope to spray iron particles above the ocean to fight climate change: The intervention may break down methane, mimicking a phenomenon that could have amplified ice ages. But scientists say far more basic research still needs to be done, James Temple, MIT Technology Review, 2/15/23
Myth-buster: Why two degrees of global warming is worse than it sounds: Breaking down the myth that a couple of degrees is no big deal, Daisy Simmons, Yale Climate Connections, 2/13/23: “Worldwide, 800 million to 3 billion people would experience chronic water scarcity at 2 C/3.6 F warming, a figure that jumps up to as high as 4 billion in with 4 C/7.2 F warming”
In Search of Clear, Night Skies: On Preserving Earth’s Darkest Places: Some Light on the Rise of Astrotourism, Johan Eklöf, LitHub, 2/15/23: “There’s something uplifting in that, despite everything, parts of the night sky can be preserved in today’s world of technology and illumination.”
The Secret to Bruce Lee’s Superhuman One-Inch Punch: Martial arts moves can seem magical, but maybe they just display a mastery of physics, Rhett Allain, Wired, 2/17/23: “It's important to remember that force is a property of the interaction, not a property of the object.”
Gene Expression in Neurons Solves a Brain Evolution Puzzle: The neocortex of our brain is the seat of our intellect. New data suggests that mammals created it with new types of cells that they developed only after their evolutionary split from reptiles, Allison Whitten, Quanta, 2/14/23
Want to live a longer life? Try eating like a centenarian: You can’t change your genes, but improving your diet will make you healthier and could make a difference in life expectancy, Anahad O’Connor, Washington Post, 2/14/23
The truth about caffeine: how coffee really affects our bodies: Every day, around the world, 2bn cups are consumed. But what actually happens after you swallow that first mouthful? Here is everything you need to know, Joel Snape, The Guardian, 2/15/23: “Up to three cups a day is probably fine, filtered if possible, dark roasted if you are trying to cut down on caffeine, but light if you are trying to benefit from the other ingredients.”
"Sometimes the prophet sees the image of Glory
in the midst of a cloud;
but the angel-messenger is invisible
because the angelic fire is too pure for one to see.
When one sees the fire flaming
up from the distance
one is only seeing the smoke that
surrounds it.
Moreover the angel asks:
What do you see?"
"I have seen the Eternal
interior,
not ocular, vision"
reply.
—from “BEAMS 21, 22, 23, The Song of Orpheus,” Ronald Johnson
Birds
Eagles Are Falling, Bears Are Going Blind: Bird flu is already a tragedy, Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 2/15/23: “This particular virus seems to be better adapted to wild birds.”
Singing the praises of carving songbirds and other birds: Carver Steve Quiram learned the joys and advantages of carving songbirds, and other birds, and talked about it at the Henry Decoy Show in Chillicothe, Dale Bowman, Chicago Sun-Times, 2/17/23
Figuring out how birds sleep is a challenge, Dan Cristol, Virginia Gazette, 2/17/23: “Many birds, in fact, sleep with only half their brains, thereby keeping one eye and the connected brain hemisphere alert for danger at all times.”
Then comes the reassembled self, the self you have to put back together. You no longer have to devote time to finding out what you are, you are just free to be whatever you want to be, unimpeded by the incessant needs of others. You somehow grow into the fullness of your humanity, form your own character, become a proper person — I don’t know, someone who has become a part of things, not someone separated from or at odds with the world.—Nick Cave
The Weird Times is all about striving toward this notion of the reassembled self, joining us with the world, at least as much as it is revealed to us when we open our selves, our hearts, to all and everything. Sending love to all who read this. —David