The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 226, September 8, 2024 (V5 #18)
Never before have so few had so much control over so much information about the past, and with it, the power to shape the present.— Carl Öhman
You gotta fight for your right to party—Beastie Boys
Books, Music, Art, Culture
Museum Celebrates the Art of Peter Aschwanden, David LaChance, Hemmings, 9/6/24: “Aschwanden (1942-2005), who initially was credited under the pseudonym ‘Juniperus Scopulorum,’ was ‘the man who brought humor and humanity to car repair manuals.’”
Brazilian musician Sérgio Mendes dies aged 83: Mendes, who popularised bossa nova among global audiences in the 1960s, had been suffering from the effects of long-term Covid, his family said, Laura Snapes, Tom Phillips, The Guardian, 9/6/24 Song: “Mas Que Nada”
‘Centennial’ by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band Review: Restoration Revelations: Featuring a young Louis Armstrong, these 1923 recordings have long been legendary but low-fidelity. Now, a multidisc edition presents them with unprecedented audio quality, Will Friedwald, Wall Street Journal, 9/2/24: Sample the music (No paywall article)
How Authoritarians Target Universities: What happens on campus reflects and often anticipates democratic decline, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, 9/1/24: “Far from being “ivory towers” closed off from society, higher education institutions are often front-line targets of those who seek to destroy democracy.”
Torrents of Magpies, Spheres of Hope: Throughout Rikki Ducornet’s prolific writing career, she has adhered to a Surrealist commitment to dream knowledge as well as a belief in literature’s ability to confront all of experience, Marina Warner, NY Review of Books, 9/19/24 issue: “…her baroque wordsmithery and wild, libertine flights of fancy—in children’s stories, essays, tales, and poetry as well as novels—have inspired a cultish following.”
The Agitator: The activist-academic Silvia Federici has never muted her message to get ahead. What’s the cost of refusing to sell out? Kelli Korducki, Hazlitt, 9/4/24: “Federici’s endgame is a society that isn’t dependent on capital or state, and which operates on a foundation of interpersonal cooperation, care, and collectivism.” Her book: Caliban and the Witch
Political Collapse: Lessons From Fallen Empires, Richard E. Blanton et al, Popular Archaeology, 9/4/24: “The conflictive political culture of the contemporary U.S. presents striking parallels to the conditions preceding civilization collapse of the past.”
Curious George and the case of the unconscious culture: Modern life is draining of consciousness, Erik Hoel, Intrinsic Perspective, 9/4/24: “If I picture the last three hundred years as a montage it blinks by on fast-forward: first individual artisans sitting in their houses, their deft fingers flowing, and then an assembly line with many hands, hands young and old and missing fingers, and then later only adult intact hands as the machines get larger, safer, more efficient, with more blinking buttons and lights, and then the machines themselves join the line, at first primitive in their movements, but still the number of hands decreases further, until eventually there are no more hands and it is just a whirring robotic factory of appendages and shapes; and yet even here, if zoomed out, there is still a spark of human consciousness lingering as a bright bulb in the dark, for the office of the overseer is the only room kept lit. Then, one day, there’s no overseer at all. It all takes place in the dark. And the entire thing proceeds like Leibniz’s mill, without mind in sight.”
Exiled she
had been left to drift
between Ether and
Earth.
—from “Into the Lollipop Light,” Rikki Ducornet
Politics, Economics, Technology
US presidential polls: Harris leads Trump nationally, but key swing state races tighter: Race so close in swing states one commentator this week called it the ‘equivalent of a knife fight in a phone booth,’ Robert Tait, The Guardian, 9/7/24
State of Play: Assessing the US election with two months to go, Sam Freedman, Comment is Freed, 9/8/24: “Arizona (11), Nevada (6), Georgia (16), North Carolina (16), Michigan (15), Wisconsin (10) and Pennsylvania (19)…Simply put: Harris needs 44 votes from that list to win. Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania would be (just about) enough.”
Can 0.03% of US votes really swing the presidential election? Visual explainer: Millions of Americans cast their votes in the US election, but a tiny fraction of those can swing the race for one candidate or another, Ana Lucía González Paz, Garry Blight, Sam Levine, The Guardian, 9/3/24
The mainstream press is failing America – and people are understandably upset: The media is still pursuing the appearance of fairness by treating true and false, normal and outrageous, as equally valid, Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian, 9/6/24: “They pursue the appearance of fairness and balance by treating the true and the false, the normal and the outrageous, as equally valid and by normalizing Republicans, especially Donald Trump, whose gibberish gets translated into English and whose past crimes and present-day lies and threats get glossed over. They neglect, again and again, important stories with real consequences.”
How the Media Sanitizes Trump’s Insanity: The political press’s efforts to rationalize Trump’s incoherent statements are eroding our shared reality and threatening informed democracy, Parker Malloy, New Republic, 9/4/24: “Voters who rely solely on traditional news sources are presented with a version of Trump that bears little resemblance to reality.”
Trump Is Getting More Confused and Incoherent. Will the Media Say So? With Trump’s latest event about the economy veering off in strange directions, a former reporter and media observer discusses the press’s failure to adequately scrutinize Trump’s mental unfitness, Greg Sargent, New Republic, 9/6/24: “Is the press doing an adequate job of analyzing Trump’s deteriorating mental state? The answer is no.”
The power of a single word about media malfeasance: It's 'sanewashing' — and it's what journalists keep doing for Trump, Margaret Sullivan, American Crisis, 9/7/24: “Trump has become more incoherent as he has aged, but you wouldn’t know it from most of the press coverage, which treats his utterances as essentially logical policy statements — a “sweeping vision,” even.”
Did Trump Take a $10 Million Bribe From Egypt and, If So, What Did Sisi Get in Return? Unpacking the dangerous ‘bromance’ between Trump and Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Daniel Silverman, Zeteo, 9/3/24
Why Trump's spurious attacks on crime are working, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 9/5/24: “The report also found that the more local crime news people consume, the more likely they are ‘to say they are concerned about crime in their community affecting them or their family.’”
Trump and allies plant seeds for ‘chaos and discord’ if he loses, experts warn: Spread of conspiracy theories seeks to foment early election doubts in case Trump loses, some Republicans say, Peter Stone, The Guardian, 9/3/24
"No Doubt" Trump and His Allies Will Attempt to Overturn a Harris Win. Here's How Democrats Are Preparing. A GOP attempt to overturn the election result is expected to be more sophisticated this time round. Democrats say their defense is too, John Harwood, Zeteo, 9/4/24
Ginni Thomas Privately Praised Group Working Against Supreme Court Reform: “Thank You So, So, So Much:” In a call with donors, First Liberty Institute’s Kelly Shackelford read the supportive email he said came from Thomas. The leader of the religious-rights group also labeled Justice Elena Kagan “treasonous” for backing a stronger ethics code, Andy Kroll, Nick Surgey, ProPublica, 9/4/24
The Dark Money Defunding Rural Schools: A network of right-wing billionaires have bankrolled a war against public education. Now they’re stepping up attacks on rural legislators—but communities are fighting back, Maurice Cunningham, Barn Raiser, 9/5/24: “Our goal is to take down the education system as we know it today.”
The right’s obsession with childless women isn’t just about ideology: it’s essential to the capitalist machine: JD Vance’s comments on Kamala Harris reflect a stubborn debate in supposedly progressive societies, Nesrine Malik, The Guardian, 9/2/24
Racism, misogyny, lies: how did X become so full of hatred? And is it ethical to keep using it? Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, I and many others have been looking for alternatives. Who wants to share a platform with the likes of Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson? Zoe Williams, The Guardian, 9/5/24
As Go Unions, So Goes America: Power concedes nothing but to collective action, Michael Podhorzer, Weekend Reading, 9/3/24: “Ordinary people need institutional collective power to make their demands heard, let alone met.”
Mondragon as the new City-State: This cooperative could be its own country, Elle Griffin, The Elysian, 9/3/24: “An ideal utopia would be a full cooperative world—people own the means of production, there’s a fair distribution of wealth.”
Harris campaign tries to beat Trump at his own game – ridicule, Chris Lamb, The Conversation, 9/5/24: “The Democrats have discovered and exploited what Michael Tomasky, writing in The New Republic, said in August 2024: Ridicule is Trump’s Achilles’ heel.”
American democracy is in peril. And racism will be the sledgehammer that destroys it: The ‘war against woke’ is not just a war against critical race theory and Black history. It is a war on our democracy, Kimberlé W Crenshaw, The Guardian, 9/6/24
Netanyahu derailed a potential Gaza hostage deal in July, Israeli newspaper reports, Mick Krever et al, APNews, 9/4/24: “…rather than accepting that proposal, the Israeli negotiators submitted new demands, making changes to the proposals they themselves had originally made.”
Israeli Protesters Have Chosen a Side: Fearing for the remaining captives, the mass rallies that erupted across Israel were essentially demanding an end to the war—and Netanyahu knows it, Meron Rapoport, The Nation, 9/4/24
Find the areas hit hardest by book bans and the nearest Little Free Library book-sharing box locations! Use this interactive map to find book-ban hotspots and discover the Little Free Libraries in those areas. Little Free Library condemns book banning. Expanding access to books is at the heart of our mission, and the rise of book bans in America goes against our organization’s core values. Learn more about our stance on book censorship and how you can get involved in protecting the freedom to read.
the soloists smile in the amber memory
of nightclubs numb with intoxication.
They’re dead – the blue veranda is silent
where they jammed, moon drift in palm
leaves and ivory; notes of copper and zinc.
—from “The Lives of Jazz Fathers,” Jacob Anthony Ramirez
Science, Environment
How a little-known 17th-century female scientist changed our understanding of insects: Maria Sibylla Merian’s beautiful and disturbing illustrations, which shaped how we look at the natural world, will be on show at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, Jennifer Rankin, The Guardian, 9/1/24: “With its beautiful, sometimes disturbing images, rendered with pinpoint precision, Metamorphosis is a work of art and scientific scholarship, from a time when there was no rigid division between disciplines.
Kepler’s Drawings Might Reveal When the Sunspots Disappeared: Johannes Kepler’s landmark 1607 sunspot observations may have been made at the end of the solar cycle, helping constrain the start of the Maunder Minimum, Matthew R. Francis, Eos, 9/3/24
Most climate policies flop, but a handful of winners could actually close the emissions gap: A new analysis leverages a fantastically comprehensive database of 1,500 climate policies that have been tried worldwide, Sarah DeWeerdt, Anthropocene, 9/3/24: “Only 63 of the 1,500 policy interventions actually produced an appreciable reduction in carbon emissions, the researchers report in a paper published in the journal Science.”
This chemical-free method for treating seeds is winning over sceptical farmers in Sweden and beyond, Inês Trindade Pereira, EuroNews, 9/4/24: “Heat-treated seeds could offer farmers a chemical-free solution for pest control.”
With Hotter, Drier Weather, California’s Joshua Trees Are in Trouble: In the Mojave Desert, rising temperatures, less rainfall, and more intense wildfires are killing off Joshua trees. California officials are working on a plan to protect the distinctive yucca tree and its desert ecosystem by establishing refuges and controlling development, Jim Robbins, Yale Environment 360, 9/5/24
How to Address Two Environmental Crises at Once: Solar fields turn out to be ideal for pollinators, too, Bill McKibben, New Yorker, 9/6/24: “We put up a field in Hinesburg. The farmer of the neighboring orchard told him he hadn’t seen fruit like this since he was a kid. Fruit set is the ultimate impact measure for pollination.”
Fungus-controlled robots tap into the unique power of nature, Cornell University, Science Daily, 9/4/24: “In creating a pair of new robots, researchers cultivated an unlikely component, one found on the forest floor: fungal mycelia. By harnessing mycelia's innate electrical signals, the researchers discovered a new way of controlling ‘biohybrid’ robots.”
Deadly Shellfish Toxins Hinder Indigenous Food Sovereignty. How to Fix That: A collaboration between VIU and the feds is working to improve testing and identify other reliable seafood sources, Michelle Gamage, The Tyee, 9/3/24: “Coastal Indigenous communities are at higher risk of being affected by paralytic shellfish poison because their diets rely more heavily on seafood than those of the general population.”
The Future of Seaweed Farming in America: The outlook has seemed bright for this crop of multiple uses, including mitigating the impacts of climate change. But major obstacles remain for the seaweed industry, Alexandra Talty, Civil Eats, 9/5/24
How ancient healing hot springs could fuel a clean energy future: One hot spring town shows how Japan could turn its underground cauldron of heat into clean energy — without risking its centuries-old tradition of public baths, Nicolás Rivero, Julia Mio Inuma, Washington Post, 9/1/24: “Experts say geothermal could provide about 10 percent of the country’s power, if Japan took advantage of it.” (No paywall)
The world is pumping out 57 million tons of plastic pollution a year, Seth Borenstein, AP News, 9/4/24: “It’s enough pollution each year — about 52 million metric tons — to fill New York City’s Central Park with plastic waste as high as the Empire State Building, according to researchers at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.”
A brief guide to the greenhouse gases driving climate change: There’s more to global warming than just carbon dioxide, Casey Crownhart, MIT Technology Review, 9/5/24: “Methane is also a powerful contributor to climate change, making up about 30% of the warming we’ve experienced to date, even though carbon dioxide is roughly 200 times more abundant in the atmosphere.”
The quest for climate-resilient cows: Researchers are working to breed varieties that can thrive in temperature extremes, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 9/5/24
Emergency responders struggle with burnout, budgets as disasters mount: Climate change has rewritten the script for disasters, David Montgomery, Stateline, 9/4/24: “We’re having incredible, record-breaking rainfall. We’re having record-breaking cold. We’re having record-breaking heat. We’re having tornadoes earlier and later.”
The Biggest Controversy in Cosmology Just Got Bigger: A long-awaited study of the cosmic expansion rate suggests that when it comes to the Hubble tension, cosmologists are still missing something, Liz Kruesi, Wired, 9/8/24
the trees are passersby
mercurial
damp light
flat orange moon
velvet navy-blue sky
—from “A group of girls from Minnesota or black mascara,” Maureen Owen
Health, Wellness
In the U.S. Response to Avian Influenza, Echoes of Covid-19: Government agencies are struggling to monitor and respond to bird flu, mirroring the early months of the Covid pandemic, Joshua Cohen, Undark, 9/2/24: “It appears that missteps are being made regarding testing, surveillance, transparency, and failure of communication and coordination throughout the health care system, the same kinds of things that hurt the response to Covid-19.”
Newly Discovered Antibody Protects Against All COVID-19 Variants, University of Texas News, 9/3/24: “Researchers have discovered an antibody able to neutralize all known variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as well as distantly related SARS-like coronaviruses that infect other animals.”
Travel could be the best defense against aging, Edith Cowan University, Science Daily, 9/5/24: “…positive travel experiences may help the body sustain a low-entropy state by modulating its four major systems.”
Parkinson’s may begin in the gut, study says, adding to growing evidence: Researchers found that people with upper gastrointestinal conditions were far more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease later in life, Meeri Kim, Washington Post, 9/5/24
The Mosquito-Borne Disease ‘Triple E’ Is Spreading in the US as Temperatures Rise: Eastern equine encephalitis, which has a high mortality rate, is becoming more common in North America as climate changes expands the habitats of insects, Zoya Tierstein, Wired, 9/7/24
Haiku [for you]
love between us is
speech and breath. loving you is
a long river running.
—Sonia Sanchez
Birds, Birding
Blue Jay Migration: An unsolved mystery about birds, and an irony of human nature, Laura Erickson, For the Birds, 9/5/24: “People have observed and studied Blue Jays for centuries, but we still cannot predict accurately whether an individual Blue Jay will leave or stay in any particular year.”
Hope for North America’s Most Endangered Bird: The Florida grasshopper sparrow was near extinction only a few years ago. The recent release of the 1,000th captive-raised sparrow into the wild has rekindled optimism, Amy Green, Inside Climate News, 9/7/24
Birds shifting more in time than space as they adjust to global warming: Still, changes account for only a small portion of what’s needed to keep track with rising temperatures, David Colgan, UCLA News, 9/2/24: “In general, birds are moving in the same direction: away from the heat. They’re moving north in latitude, up in elevation and starting their breeding seasons sooner, before it gets too hot. But they’re not adapting far or fast enough to keep pace with climate change.”
Other News
I posted a new Writerscast interview with Book PR expert Leah Paulos where we talked about the current state of book publishing and marketing.
Happy 90th birthday, Sonia Sanchez!
Don’t just sit around and complain. Do something.—Michelle Obama
Registering High School Voters, Joyce Vance, Civil Discourse, 9/3/24: “Civics Center is organizing High School Voter Registration Week around the country.
Volunteer for Harris for President?
Get a yard sign: https://store.kamalaharris.com/harris-walz-yard-sign/
In this moment, I’m still feeling hopeful and optimistic, and I hope you are as well, but there is so much work to be done still. Let’s get to work. Do whatever you can in the next weeks to make a difference for all of us.
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.
Stay well; share love; work for good. We need each other, now more than ever. We can do this.
Love always—David