The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 193, January 21, 2024 (V4 #37)
[A] despot easily forgives his subjects for not loving him, provided they do not love each other. He does not ask them to assist him in governing the State; it is enough that they do not aspire to govern it themselves. He stigmatizes as turbulent and unruly spirits those who would combine their exertions to promote the prosperity of the community, and, perverting the natural meaning of words, he applauds as good citizens those who have no sympathy for any but themselves. — Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 2, Ch.4
We must fully understand – and ensure voters understand – that there is no Trump without the pre-existing MAGA movement, and that this movement remains an existential threat to us all.—Michael Podhorzer
Books, Art, Culture
Cary Grant and Randolph Scott’s Hollywood Story: “Our Souls Did Touch:” Hedda Hopper once asked of Grant, “Whom does he think he is fooling?” The star’s bond with Scott has been the subject of nearly a century of speculation, but the truth about their impact on each other’s lives has been hiding in plain sight, David Canfield, Vanity Fair, 1/18/24
Mary Weiss brought streetwise realism to the Shangri-Las – and let 60s girl groups flirt with danger: Weiss’s piercing voice gave the trio’s songs about bad boys – with their unusually high body count – a lasting punch - Shangri-Las lead singer, Mary Weiss, dies aged 75, Alexis Petridis, The Guardian, 1/20/24. “Remember, Walking in the Sand”
Oh, what will happen to
The light I gave to you
What will I do with it now?
—sung by the Shangri-Las, written by George Francis Morton
Motherhood and the Moon: On Liminal States of Change and Uncertainty: Solace in Lunar Metaphysics, Rebecca Boyle, LitHub, 1/16/24: “Be assured that not-knowing, being able to live in a liminal state of change and uncertainty, is a form of knowing.”
The Birth of My Daughter, the Death of My Marriage: Now that I was doing little besides keeping this tiny creature alive, it was impossible to ignore my desire to wander the streets with our baby, in ever-widening loops away from home, Leslie Jamison, New Yorker, 1/15/24
Choose two of the three: career, family, community: The rule of threes, Erik Hoel, Intrinsic Perspective, 1/16/24: “Implicitly, this comes with a warning—try to maximize all three and you will fail at all of them.”
‘The Zone of Interest’: Inside the banality of evil, on-screen and off: Martin Amis’s novel becomes an unnerving cinematic portrait of the human capacity for self-justifying cruelty, Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, 1/16/24
The Culture War Tearing American Environmentalism Apart: In Minneapolis, the housing shortage has fractured the green community, Jerusalem Demsas, The Atlantic, 1/18/24: “Debates about how to use and value the natural world get persistently entangled with questions of honor or status—questions about whose way of life is best.”
When Private Enterprise Fails, Public Enterprise Must Step Up, Jim Hightower, Lowdown, 1/18/24: “Housing is not only a basic human need, but also a community essential that can’t be left to the whims and greed of developers.”
Trials of the Witchy Women: Across seven centuries, women have been accused of witchcraft—but what that means often differs wildly, revealing the anxieties of each particular society, Rivka Galchen, New Yorker, 1/15/24: “Perhaps our fascination with witch trials is more about imagining our own trials.”
What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation: Teachers say mobile phones make their lives a living hell – so one Massachusetts school barred them, Tik Root, The Guardian, 1/17/24: “…the move has been transformative, often in small but cumulatively meaningful ways.”
Texas ‘book ban’ law blocked by 5th Circuit Appeals Court, Cora Neas, KXAN TV, 1/17/24: “But ‘neither [the State] nor the public has any interest in enforcing a regulation that violates federal law.’”
Steve Genter is selling his Olympic medals. But their real value is how he won them: Second fiddle to Mark Spitz and swimming with a collapsed lung, the American’s Munich story eclipses the medals’ worth, Andy Bull, The Guardian, 1/18/24
Creating new narratives, Lyz Lenz, Men Yell at Me, 1/21/24: “I think a lot about [E. Jean] Carroll although I’ve never met her. About a woman who will relentlessly fight back against a man so relentless.”
Six Miles from the Mouth of the River: Who are land acknowledgements for? Kelly Boutsalis, Hazlitt, 1/17/24: “I started to see how the territorial acknowledgement could become very superficial and also how it sort of fetishizes these actual tangible, concrete treaties. They're not metaphors—they're real institutions, and for us to write and recite a territorial acknowledgement that sort of obscures that fact, I think we do a disservice to that treaty and to those nations.”
Face recognition technology follows a long analog history of surveillance and control based on identifying physical features, Sharrona Pearl, The Conversation, 1/19/24: “Viewed as a part of the long history of people-tracking, face recognition techology’s incursions into privacy and limitations on free movement are carrying out exactly what biometric surveillance was always meant to do.”
I might seize life back from the telephone
when someone—what someone?—any someone,
not killing time, wants a conversation.
—from “Montpeyroux Sonnets 7,” Marilyn Hacker
Politics, Economics
America's Legal Soap Opera: It's time to cancel the show, Sarah Kendzior, Newsletter, 1/20/24: “The America I know still exists. I live in the thick of it in Missouri, but it’s everywhere. It’s fluid and senseless and trashy and satisfying, like a soap. People keep asking me if it’s still on, like a soap. Why I’m still watching that shit, like a soap. I tell them I got it programmed, like a VCR, because nothing’s gonna make me miss my stories.” (DW: If you only read one article from TWT this week, make it this one.)
Science is revealing why American politics are so intensely polarized: Political psychologists say they see tribalism intensifying, fueled by contempt for the other side, Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, 1/20/24 (Free article)
This Group Has Helped Farmworkers Become Farm Owners for More Than 2 Decades: California’s farmworkers face untold barriers accessing the land, capital, and training needed to strike out on their own. For 20 years, ALBA has been slowly changing the landscape for this important group of aspiring growers, Amy Mayer, Civil Eats, 1/18/24
Half of recent US inflation due to high corporate profits, report finds: Thinktank report says ‘resounding evidence’ shows companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop, Tom Perkins, The Guardian, 1/19/24
Loose bolts open door to racism, Tesnim Zekeria, Popular Information, 1/18/24: “While the specific cause is still to be determined, the facts suggest the Boeing incident was related to poor quality control standards, not diversity efforts.”
It isn’t ‘anti-democratic’ to bar Trump from office. It’s needed to protect democracy: If it lets an insurrectionist like Trump on the ballot, the supreme court will be putting out a welcome mat to autocracy, Steven Greenhouse, The Guardian, 1/18/24
Trump Wants Revenge—And So Does His Base: Many of his voters can’t accept what’s happened over the past several years, and they blame other Americans, Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 1/16/24: “What can turn an ordinary person—a father, the pleasant older lady who lives down the street—into the family powder keg, or even a deluded seditionist who hopes the U.S. military will seize control of the country?”
Trump's Holiness Rises as His Corruption is Revealed, in the Best Authoritarian Tradition, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, 1/17/24: “The more Trump’s crimes come to light, and justice moves to hold him accountable, the more he must be elevated as a being who is in some fashion not bound by the laws of ordinary men.”
There is still a way to stop Donald Trump – but time is running out: No Republican can out-Trump Trump. Opponents need to target his flaws: a bloody insurrection and a record of broken promises, Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, 1/19/24
Bill Ackman Is a Brilliant Fictional Character: A close reading of his remarkable social-media posts, Kurt Andersen, The Atlantic, 1/18/24: “…recent posts of Ackman’s are like a novella, an exquisite piece of satirical fiction in digital epistolary form. They have the voice of an absurdly self-regarding unreliable narrator, a hot-headed, self-righteous, born-rich billionaire investor who considers himself intelligent and virtuous, persecuted by villains as he fights for justice and the honor of his defenseless goddess wife—and reveals his foolishness and awfulness and possible derangement in the course of a week-long public tantrum.” (no paywall)
America's fractured reality is fueling political violence: The red flags are everywhere. Will we see them in time? Caroline Orr Bueno, Weaponized, 1/17/24: “With a sizable percentage of the population bracing for civil war, and a small but motivated subgroup willing to take action to incite it, it’s worth asking what a civil war would look like in 2024.”
It’s a Cult, Lucian K. Truscott IV, Newsletter, 1/17/24: “He is the leader of a cult. This election is about how many there are of them, and how many there are of us, and who will turn out and vote.”
Will January 6th Be Enough to Save America? It could be our 23-F, or our Beer Hall Putsch, Michael Podhorzer, Weekend Reading, 1/16/24: “Trump can and should have long ago been convicted (either in a court of law, an impeachment trial, or the court of public opinion) of abusing his power as president and being unfit to hold higher office again.”
Wiping Away the Tears: Carrying repatriated artifacts, a new generation of Lakota ride to honor those who died in the Wounded Knee Massacre, Winona LaDuke, Barn Raiser, 1/17/24: “On December 29, the Lakota held a ceremony at the Wounded Knee gravesite and read the names of those who were killed, and identified—aloud—women, children and entire families wiped out by the howitzers.”
Guatemala Just Ran January 6th In Reverse: It’s the most successful pro-democracy movement of the 21st century. So why has nobody heard of it? Quico Toro, Persuasion, 1/16/24: “Amid a million stories of democratic backsliding everywhere from Hungary to India, from Israel to America itself, here’s this tiny poor country showing us the way regular people, indigenous people, can fight back against the enemies of democracy and win. It sounds like a movie. But it’s real.”
The Price of Netanyahu’s Ambition: Amid war with Hamas, a hostage crisis, the devastation of Gaza, and Israel’s splintering identity, the Prime Minister seems unable to distinguish between his own interests and his country’s, David Remnick, New Yorker, 1/14/24: “When I see Israelis and Palestinians, I see twins, people who are alike in so many ways, mirroring each other, yet they go on inflicting more and more trauma on each other to the point where we refuse to see each other.”—Hadas Ziv
Time for Biden to Break With Netanyahu: The plan to depopulate Gaza of Palestinians is one excess too many, Robert Kuttner, American Prospect, 1/17/24
How Ten Middle East Conflicts Are Converging Into One Big War: The U.S. is enmeshed in wars among disparate players in Israel, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, Robin Wright, New Yorker, 1/17/24: “Diplomacy has been thrown under the bus.”
Israel’s plans for Gaza’s future will only keep the flame of Hamas resistance burning: Attempts to excise the group and its leaders are unlikely to succeed and risk not only perpetuating the cycle of violence but spreading it wider, Ahmad Samih Khalidi, The Guardian, 1/21/24: “Hamas’s brutal tactics have been washed out of Palestinian consciousness by the mass erasure of civilian lives.”
Let those who give their lives to destroy other lives
be called not heroes but murderers, the disgrace of their people.
Let the day come, let it come now,
when the name warrior will be a name of folly
and the word victory mean a vain thing.
—from “The Curse of the Prophetess,” Ursula Le Guin
Science, Environment
Supreme Court Weighs Overturning a Pillar of Federal Regulatory Law: While federal agencies are promulgating a slew of climate regulations, the high court heard arguments for limiting regulators' power, Marianne Lavelle, Inside Climate News, 1/18/24: “Chevron is probably the most important, and certainly the most-cited precedent, in all of administrative law, according to scholars on both sides of this dispute.”
Military Emissions Are Too Big to Keep Ignoring: The world is finally talking about them, Zoë Schlanger, The Atlantic, 1/17/24: “The U.S. military, meanwhile, is the single largest institutional consumer of petroleum in the world…”
Yes, it’s cold. Yes, the planet’s still warming: It’s important to remember that the cold snap is, for many of us, just a moment of discomfort, while climate change is a long-term disaster, Derrick Z. Jackson, MSNBC, 1/17/24
Can Animals Evolve Fast Enough to Keep Up with Climate Change? Maybe, Brian Owens, Hakai,1/15/24: “Hybridization can bring greater adaptability to some species.”
Trawling Boats Are Hauling Up Ancient Carbon From the Ocean Depths: The world’s trawlers are stirring carbon dioxide into the water—and into the atmosphere, Matt Simon, Wired, 1/18/24
New AI model helps detect and identify microplastics in wastewater, Abhishyant Kidangoor, Monga Bay, 1/16/24: “PlasticNet uses deep learning, a subset of artificial intelligence, to identify microplastics based on the signals they produce in response to light exposure.”
Dangerous chemicals found in recycled plastics, making them unsafe for use – experts explain the hazards, Bethany Carney Armroth, Eric Carmona Martinez, The Conversation, 1/16/24: “We found 191 pesticides, 107 pharmaceuticals and 81 industrial compounds among many others in the recycled plastic pellets.”
Microplastics, like Asbestos, Can Kill, The current explosion in colorectal cancer among young adults, for example, appears to be at least partly caused by our gut being flooded with microplastics in the food and beverages we consume…Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 1/19/24
Can Submerging Seaweed Cool the Climate? Submerged seaweed can store carbon at the bottom of the ocean, but how effective the strategy will be—and how it will affect ocean health—remains unclear, Saima May Sidik, Eos, 1/16/24
How cutting back on beef helps the planet: Producing beef causes eight to 10 times more carbon pollution per serving than chicken, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 1/19/24
Forget energy independence. The secret to a renewable grid lies in transcontinental electricity trading: In a first, researchers show how renewable energy can be 100% reliable and economically feasible through transcontinental power pools—no long-term storage required, Sarah DeWeerdt, Anthropocene, 1/16/24
California’s Oil Country Faces an ‘Existential’ Threat. Kern County Is Betting on the Carbon Removal Industry to Save It: “We are at a very, very difficult crossroads,” Emma Foehringer Merchant, Joshua Yeager, Inside Climate News, 1/16/24
A cash crop that never runs out: Supplemental income from 50 wind turbines helps a fourth-generation family ranch stay viable, Bridgett Ennis, Yale Climate Connections, 1/17/24
Cloned rhesus monkey lives to adulthood for first time: A method that provides cloned embryos with a healthy placenta could pave the way for more research involving the primates, Miryam Naddaf, Nature, 1/16/24
First 'thermodynamic computer' uses random noise to calculate: Random physical fluctuations – or noise – can be a source of errors for conventional computers, but for a prototype "thermodynamic computer" they can be harnessed to run calculations, Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, New Scientist, 1/16/24
Clashing Cosmic Numbers Challenge Our Best Theory of the Universe: As measurements of distant stars and galaxies become more precise, cosmologists are struggling to make sense of sparring values, Liz Kruesi, Quanta, 1/19/24: “In brief, measurements of how fast the universe is expanding today — known as the Hubble constant — don’t match the value you get when extrapolating from the early universe. The conundrum has become known as the Hubble tension.”
Health, Wellness
A Key to Detecting Brain Disease Earlier Than Ever: Treatment of Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, ALS, and other brain diseases depends on reliable detection—especially in those who don’t even know they’re at risk. An innovative scratch-and-sniff test can help,Michael J. Fox, Deborah W. Brookside, Wired, 1/15/24
How doctors are using AI to diagnose a hidden heart condition in kids, Mark Johnson, Washington Post, 1/16/24: “The algorithm can interpret images in seconds, classifying them either as “normal” or as ‘consider rheumatic heart disease.’”
What is a man but a pocket
full of rose thorns
They are always so afraid to bleed
I do it without being asked
—from “This Is a Song for the Good Girl (Or the Lonely),” Karisma Price, in Best American Poetry, 1/14/24
Birds, Birds, Birds
Bird populations are declining: Some Are in Your Neighborhood, Harry Stevens, Washington Post, 1/17/24: “all of birds’ biggest challenges — habitat loss, pesticides, glass windows, even domestic cats — are man-made. Climate change, which alters and sometimes shrinks birds’ ranges, is a threat multiplier.” (Free article)
Study shows minimal impact of wind turbines on bird populations: Oil and gas extraction was found to cause a significant decline in bird numbers, unlike wind power, Wall-y, WarpNews, 1/17/24
As I read and edit the firehose of news every week, it helps me to know we are in this together and by sharing news and ideas, and working for change, we are helping create and sustain our community, scattered as we may be.
Wherever you are, whoever you are with, whatever you are doing — I send warm regards, and thanks for who you are and what you do. Please continue to keep in touch. Send messages and news….stay warm.
Above all, be well; share love; work for good. We need each other, now more than ever.—David