Status Updates From White Noise by Don DeLillo ...

The wind changes direction. They have to evacuate again. A rumour starts that they are to release organisms into the cloud that will suck up the toxin and decompose it. This makes Babette feel scared.

"Scared of what?"
"The sky, the earth, I don't know."
"The greater the scientific advance, the more primitive the fear."
“Why is that?” she said.

AI.

Heinrich comes into his element talking about the event. Babette reads horoscopes and predictions to the blind. Heinrich talks to Jack about how nobody knows anything, how if you went back in time, you wouldn’t know how to make glass or what a nucleotide is. Jack is told that death might be inside him. Murray reassures him.

1. Station wagons, stuff, existential dread.
2. Meet the family. Everyone’s strange and death lingers.
3. Academia is so impressed with itself that Elvis and Hitler Studies feel profound.
4. Career boost? Change your name, wear dark glasses, gain weight, become more Hitler-like. Learn German later.

Everyone’s smart. Everyone’s ridiculous.

The airborne toxic event. Really great seeing this family dynamic we’ve learnt so much about and how it bends to this disaster. Delayed symptoms. Description of black cloud. Heinrich gleeful.