Memorable Stuff I Read This Week
Within the U.S. today, people are again moving because of disasters, and because of the slow-grind attrition of heat, flooding, and rising insurance rates. Earlier this year, the nonprofit Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre found that disasters had caused 11 million evacuations or relocations in the previous 12 months. These numbers will climb.
— Vann R. Newkirk II / “What Climate Change Will Do To America By Mid-Century” / The Atlantic
Not sure what’s more embarrassing, that at fourteen
I still lusted for stuffed animals or that mum’s target
at the claw machine was way better than mine.
Precise as threading a needle, she’d push the steel arm straight
into the heart of the stuffed pit, wait, sipping
Pepsi, hand on hip, sure as a cowboy.
Once, her single turn brought back not one but two animals.
— Preeti Vangani / “Astro Mischief”
The right to roam is an American tradition dating back to our nation’s origins, when ordinary folks had the right to walk through privately owned woods and fields, and along the coasts.
While this may seem like a vestige of our past, gone forever like the flocks of passenger pigeons whose migrations once darkened our skies, there is reason for hope. In several European countries this freedom has been reborn and is thriving, suggesting that it can be reborn here.
— Ken Ilgunas / This Land Is Our Land: How We Lost The Right to Roam and How to Take it Back
This is a brutal place.
We blame the dead for their dying.
We train our eyes to make their bodies grow to monstrous girth.
We say their blood is a necessary sacrifice.
Or worse, we forget their blood.
— Ashley M. Jones / “Conflict / War”
An analysis of DNA evidence from more than 15,000 ancient humans has revealed that human evolution has accelerated over the past 10,000 years. Researchers identified almost 500 gene variants that evolved through natural selection in ancient European and Middle-Eastern people after the dawn of agriculture. Many of those variants are linked to the resistance to diseases, such as tuberculosis. Accelerated evolution could reflect the intensification of lifestyle changes that started in the Neolithic period, such as new foods and pathogens, says population geneticist David Reich.
— Jacob Smith / “Human evolution sped up after farming” / Nature Brief
We didn’t have a telephone.
We didn’t have a radio.
We didn’t have a fridge.
We used to keep the bodies for three days because that’s how long it took for the messenger to alert the relatives, by foot.
They put the dead bodies by the side of the river.
— Bhanu Kapil / “Diptych”
In the next 30 years, climate disruptions won’t make whole states unlivable, and demographic shifts might not reach full exodus levels. But in America, small change is often deeply felt, and bit by bit, the American economy and culture will likely be transformed by climate attrition and the redistribution of people. Southern states will lose residents and dynamism. Bad weather and ruined infrastructure will sap productivity and leave behind thousands of acres of abandoned farmland after crop failures.
— Vann R. Newkirk II / “What Climate Change Will Do To America By Mid-Century” / The Atlantic
What I’m Listening To:
Now who the hell are these federal pricks?
Hiding in the senate like a bloated ass tick
Air-conditioned fuckstick loafers
Sittin’ in a room full of army posters
A coal to a diamond, a vote into law
They campaign up all the blood they can draw
Mold your world, a soldier’s just clay
How much does every soldier weigh?
Cut you at the ankles, and they throw that ass away
Boots on the ground
— Massive Attack & Tom Waits / “Boots on the Ground”
thee istsfor manity reader 