Friday Homestead Dispatch

Tic Tac Toe

You know the greatest lesson of history? It's that history is whatever the victors say it is. That's the lesson. Whoever wins, that's who decides the history. —All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

1.
The human race seems incapable of learning past lessons as nuclear testing may once again be on the table. This is especially chilling as autocracies seem to be on the rise around the world. All nations, supposedly, stopped destructive testing in the 1990s but the consequences of those tests are still in full play today. A special report this week from the New York Times indicates as tensions deepen in America’s relations with Russia and China, satellite images reveal all three nations are actively expanding their nuclear testing facilities, cutting roads and digging new tunnels at long-dormant proving grounds, including in Nevada.

As this pressure mounts, some experts fear that the United States could act first. Ernest Moniz, a physicist who oversaw the nation’s nuclear complex as energy secretary under President Barack Obama, said there’s increasing interest from members of Congress, the military and U.S. weapons laboratories to begin full-scale explosive tests once again. “Among the major nuclear powers, if there is a resumption of testing, it will be by the United States first,” Mr. Moniz said in a recent interview.

Ever wonder why cancer is such a pervasive disease here? It could be cigarettes and diet but in the 1960s teams at St. Louis University and the Washington University School of Dental Medicine collected around 320,000 baby teeth, mainly from the St. Louis area, that were donated by parents and guardians. They found that children born in 1963 had 50 times the level of strontium-90 in their teeth as children born in 1950. The initial results would later become the first major public study to raise the alarm on testing’s inherent risk to human health.

W.J. Hennigan writes that U.S. intelligence assessment put the odds at 50-50 that Russia would launch a nuclear strike to halt Ukrainian forces if they breached its defense of Crimea. She writes that just four days after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration had directed a small group of experts and strategists, a “Tiger Team,” to devise a new nuclear “playbook” of contingency plans and responses. Pulling in experts from the intelligence, military and policy fields, they pored over years-old emergency preparedness plans, weapon-effects modeling and escalation scenarios, dusting off materials that in the age of counterterrorism and cyberwarfare were long believed to have faded into irrelevance.

Kathleen Kingsbury writes that there are several actions that the U.S. president could take without buy-in from a Congress unlikely to cooperate.

As a first step, the United States could push to reinvigorate and establish with Russia and China, respectively, joint information and crisis control centers to ensure that misunderstandings and escalation don’t spiral. Such hotlines have all but gone dormant. The United States could also renounce the strategy of launching its nuclear weapons based only on a warning of an adversary’s launch, reducing the chance America could begin a nuclear war because of an accident, a human or mechanical failure or a simple misunderstanding. The United States could insist on robust controls for artificial intelligence in the launch processes of nuclear weapons.

Democracy rarely prevents war, but it can eventually serve as a check on it. Nuclear use has always been the exception: No scenario offers enough time for voters to weigh in on whether to deploy a nuclear weapon. Citizens, therefore, need to exert their influence well before the country finds itself in such a situation.

We should not allow the next generation to inherit a world more dangerous than the one we were given.

2.
They are flat out saying that whoever has the most money wins as Fuckleory raised more than $170 million in May—because wealthy folks just love a felon. All the more reason that every breathing Homo sapiens needs to VOTE BLUE.

3.
Oil companies have been on a path of destruction since Jed Clampett poked a hole in the ground…actually way before but how often do I get to use ’Jed Clampett’ in a sentence? Most of the crap we use in daily life comes from those dead dinos. And now, as oil companies are doubling down and touting the wonders of chemical recycling, Pro Publica has dug deep and found that not much is being recycled at all, nor is pyrolysis capable of curbing the plastic crisis. Not now. Maybe not ever. Consumers aren’t going to parse through the caveats of a 33% recycled claim or understand how the green technology they’re being sold perpetuates the fossil fuel industry.

Neil Tangri, the science and policy director at the environmental justice network Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, said “If anyone has cracked the code for a large-scale, efficient and profitable way to turn plastic into plastic, every reporter in the world would get a tour.” Sheesh.

4.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, a MAGA supporter’s wet dream, signed into law on Wednesday requiring a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font” in all public classrooms, from kindergarten to state-funded universities. “Today, we fulfill our promise to bring drastic reform to our educational system and bring common sense back to our classrooms.”

Lee Papa chimed in with the Republican governor and the Republican legislature of Louisiana are forcing kids as young as four years-old to be faced, every single day they are in school, with a poster-sized list of rules that includes no fucking outside of marriage. The "Thou shalt not commit adultery" section…One thing I look forward to is that if the Ten Commandments posters are ever installed in every classroom, they will have dicks drawn on them inside 2 days of being put up.

I’m hoping they will also be printing posters with the Five Precepts of Buddhism, the Ten Principles of Judaism, the Five Pillars of Islam…and especially the Five Pints of Calvinism. Good job, Jeff.

5.
For those of you voting in Arizona, Simon Rosenberg interviewed our own Kirsten Engel who is running against MAGA Juan Ciscomani for the District 6 U.S. House seat. More on her positions here.

6.
And speaking of voting blue in Arizona, vote the Republicans who control the Arizona House of Representatives out! The Copper Courier reports that earlier this year, Democratic Rep. Stephanie Stahl-Hamilton, who represents parts of Pima, Santa Cruz, and Cochise counties, introduced the Right to Contraception Act in the Arizona House. The bill would have given every Arizonan a right to obtain and use contraceptives. It would also have prevented future legislation from restricting access to birth control or Plan B, among other forms of contraception. Because Republicans control the Arizona House of Representatives with a two-member majority (31 Republicans—29 Democrats), and again in the Arizona Senate (16 Republicans–14 Democrats, it’s the GOP who decides if bills get assigned to committee, if those bills get hearings in committee, and if those bills get voted on at all. The Right to Contraception Act did not get a hearing, nor did it get a vote, in Arizona.

In March, Republican Sen. Sonny Borrelli summed it up in his response to a question about whether he would support or oppose future efforts to restrict access to contraceptives: “Like I said, Bayer Company invented aspirin. Put it between your knees.” Sonny Borrelli, the man who likes to beat on women. Who votes for these MAGA-ites? Oh yeah, low information voters.

The gist of the linked article is that birth control pills are also used to treat endometriosis, a disorder where tissue grows outside the uterus. It can cause extreme pain, excessive bleeding, and even infertility. And studies have shown that at least 11% of women in the world have endometriosis. Republican male lawmakers once again making heinous decisions about women’s health.

7.
And to lighten things up even more, check out my post from a couple years ago on the work of Cris Shapan.

And click here for a movie about Gary.

8.
Don’t forget that next Thursday, June 27, the Morpholinos will be back at Monterey Court with their obscure covers, strange originals, and overall careless demeanor to make you shake your butt a bit for a few hours—6:30-9pm.

And now…