Virtual Reality?

From “Wag the Dog” to “Don’t Look Up,” Hollywood has long been exploring the potential for mass confusion between what is now called the Metaverse and what we have traditionally assumed to be our physical reality — especially when it comes to wars and other disasters.

In that context, what is war anyway? Is it bullets and bombs exploding somewhere out there or is that all just for show?

The dramatic conflict in Ukraine might be simply the latest offering on Channel 36 while “Emily in Paris” might qualify as a deduction on your tax return. It’s all a matter of how you frame things. There can be a seamless interface between the virtual and the physically palpable in our fragmented lives if that’s what we want — but then again, quantum physics suggests that it’s okay if those lines seem blurred.

It is fundamentally unknown (to us) what place Homo Sapiens occupies in the natural order; we may be cells in some much larger organism that we are only starting to be able to perceive. That would be an outer reality we don’t understand yet. We’re much better at looking inward and seeing how much is going on at the molecular level.

In fact, our technologies, those items we are so proud of, may be the mere beginnings of what we need to develop to become a truly “intelligent species. After all, how smart can we pretend to be when we still threaten to blow each other up over middling issues like the cost of fossil fuels?

There’s no future in that one, only the distant, decomposed past.

All of these thoughts come tumbling through my brain as I try to juggle the give-and-take between the various parties posturing for one another along the Ukraine border, real or imagined.

The whole thing just doesn’t make sense.

It makes me hope they all just back down soon so I can move on to another channel.

TODAY’s HEADLINES:

• Justice Breyer to retire; Biden to fill vacancy (AP)

• A shortlist of potential nominees to replace Breyer on the Supreme Court (CNN)

• Supreme Court confirmation fight to make history in 50-50 Senate (Politico)

• What would a 2024 Trump coup look like? A new paper offers a worrying answer. (WP)

• Record Levels of Gun Violence and the Democrats’ Dilemma — Amid continued calls for police reform and a surge in firearm deaths, the Biden Administration and Mayor Eric Adams are trying to balance public safety and politics. (New Yorker)

• With Some Voters ‘Ready to Move On,’ Democrats Search for New Message on Virus — Democrats were cheered for strict lockdowns and pandemic precautions. Now many weary voters want to hear the party’s plan for living with the coronavirus. (NYT)

• House moderates inch toward extinction (Politico)

• California appears to have passed the peak of the Omicron wave, The Associated Press reports. (AP)

• How to Make Sense of Our Covid Losses, Big and Small (NYT)

• The Omicron variant appears to result in less severe COVID-19 than seen during previous periods of high coronavirus transmission including the Delta wave, with shorter hospital stays, less need for intensive care and fewer deaths, according to a new U.S. study. However, the variant has led to record numbers of infections and hospitalizations, straining the U.S. healthcare system. (Reuters)

• The Case Against Masks at School — Districts should rethink imposing on millions of children an intervention that provides little discernible benefit. (Atlantic)

• Families have been ripped apart. Educational and employment opportunities have been denied, maybe forever. People have missed milestones like birthdays, funerals and weddings. Some gave up on coming to the U.S. and instead relocated to another country, while others have been trapped in war zones. Rowaida Abdelaziz's yearlong investigation found hundreds of examples of people whose lives have been inexorably altered by Donald Trump's 2017 ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries, and the stories will break your heart. [HuffPost]

• COVID-19 vaccine booster drive is faltering in the US (AP)

• I want to educate Afghan freedom fighters. Will the world support us? (WP)

• As Islamic State Resurges, U.S. Is Drawn Back Into the Fray — “ISIS is not over”: Attacks in Syria and Iraq make clear that the militants have lost neither their will to fight nor their ability to do so. (NYT)

• Talks in Paris aim to resolve the crisis over Ukraine, as U.S. steps up arms shipments to Kyiv (WP)

• Ukraine’s front line: Where lives turn on distant decisions (AP)

• Russia warned that imposing sanctions on President Vladimir Putin personally would not hurt him but would be "politically destructive", after U.S. President Joe Biden said he would consider such a move if Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia held military drills and deployed more forces and fighter jets to Belarus for exercises next month as officials prepared to sit down for four-way talks in Paris on the conflict in east Ukraine. (Reuters)

• U.S. to Bolster Europe’s Fuel Supply to Blunt Threat of Russian Cutoff — Many European officials suspect President Vladimir V. Putin instigated the crisis in the winter in part to leverage his threat to turn off Russian fuel sales to Europe. (NYT)

• LNG tanker near Russia’s Baltic territory draws scrutiny amid Ukraine crisis (Financial Times)

• President Joe Biden is trying to pull off the kind of alliance on the international front that has eluded him on his domestic agenda — only this one is more complicated and globally dangerous: keeping the West unified as it faces what White House officials say is an increasing likelihood that Vladimir Putin will order further invasion of Ukrainian territory. [AP]

• ‘She was Zoom’d out:’ Veep mulls escape from D.C. bubble — Kamala Harris never liked the insider game, or played it particularly well. Now, allies concede it's hurting her. (Politico)

• As Biden campaigned for president pushing gun control, the United States was passing a grim milestone: the most firearm deaths recorded in a single year since systematic tracking began. But gun deaths keep climbing and Biden’s reform efforts have sputtered, leaving some wondering whether he’ll miss the best window for significant changes. [HuffPost]

• San Jose approves 1st US insurance law for gun owners (AP)

• Crypto collapse forces reckoning for everyday investors — Cryptocurrencies have lost roughly half their total value in a matter of weeks, wiping out an astonishing $1.35 trillion in value globally and hiking pressure on regulators to develop a coordinated approach toward overseeing the industry. (WP)

• How to Survive When Stocks Behave Badly — The stock market’s swings have been startling. Unfortunately, it’s wise to prepare for much worse (NYT)

• Apple achieved its highest-ever market share in China in the fourth quarter, when it was the top-selling vendor there for the first time in six years, research firm Counterpoint Research reported. (Reuters)

• With 192 lasers and temperatures more than three times hotter than the center of the sun, scientists hit — at least for a fraction of a second — a key milestone on the long road toward nearly pollution-free fusion energy. (AP)

• Indonesia's capital is rapidly sinking into the sea — Now the government is leaving, and moving the country's capital to the island of Borneo. (NPR)

• More than 500 acres along California’s Lost Coast are being returned to Native American tribes that have inhabited the area for thousands of years, the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League announced on Tuesday. (Cal Today)

• Astronomers discover mysterious pulsing object that may be new class of star (Guardian)

• Ghostly monkey and crocodile newts among new Mekong area species (BBC)

• "Language is always in flux, always changing, morphing, moving. Words are added; words drop away. Words shift in meaning to mirror the world: digitize used to mean to manipulate with the fingers" (Hudson Review)

• ‘Don’t You Know Who I Am?’ Screams Protected Bird Species After Hunter Shoots At It (The Onion)