Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

. . . I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail . . .

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti / “I Am Waiting” / These Are My Rivers: New and Selected Poems

The planet just experienced the hottest February on record, with global average temperature rising 1.77°C above the pre-industrial average for the month, according to a bulletin from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). That makes it the ninth month in a row to set a monthly heat record.

— James Dinneen / “The world just experienced the hottest February on record” / New Scientist

. . . God, like the future, is female—a prophylactic
against patriarchy, a cork stopper in the mouth of a gun.

— Gregory Pardlo / “Giornata 4”

In accounts of the Anthropocene, and of the present climate crisis, capitalism is very often the pivot on which the narrative turns. I have no quarrel with this: as I see it, Naomi Klein and others are right to identify capitalism as one of the principal drivers of climate change. However, I believe that this narrative often overlooks an aspect of the Anthropocene that is of equal importance: empire and imperialism.

— Amitav Ghosh / The Great Derangement

The soldiers give off a smell that reminds me of coffins. I find myself wishing that a heart attack would kill me.

— Mosab Abu Toha / “A Palestinian Poet’s Perilous Journey Out of Gaza” / The New Yorker

Just to recite the relevant history, as quickly as possible. Forty years ago, Exxon’s scientists learned all there was to know about climate change—they forecasted the temperature in 2020 with remarkable accuracy. And the company’s executives believed them—among other things they began building their drilling rigs higher to compensate for the rise in sea level they knew was coming, and plotting out which corners of the Arctic they would drill once it melted. What they didn’t do was tell the rest of us: instead, they helped erect a huge architecture of deceit and denial and disinformation that kept us locked for three decades in a sterile battle about whether or not global warming was ‘real,’ a fight both sides knew the answer to from the outset. But one side was willing to lie.

— Bill McKibben / “The most epic (and literal) gaslighting of all time” / Substack

. . . I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody . . .

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti / “I Am Waiting” / These Are My Rivers: New and Selected Poems

What I’m Listening To:

All hail
God’s Country
Daily Mail bacon baps
Racist uncles want their country back
Flag Shaggers
Maggie Thatcher
Oh Britannia
God save the King

— Lambrini Girls / “God’s Country”