First Day of School Links!

* Some late but very nice press for my Octavia Butler book: I was on an episode of the nationally syndicated radio show Viewpoints Radio this week, and the book had a lovely review in LARB!

* CFP: Artificial Life: Debating Medical Modernity (April 19-21, UC Riverside).

* $75 million dollars to philosophy at Johns Hopkins.

* And on the pedestal these words appear.

* 12 People Face Misdemeanor Charges for Giving Food to The Homeless in El Cajon.

* A girl-power moment for Medieval Times, where a woman has the lead for the first time. I have wanted to take my kids to Medieval Times ever since listening to the Doughboys episode about it a few months ago.

* Like the story about the sexual assaults of the US gymnastics team, there is something about Eliza Dushku’s story of being abused as a child by adults who were trusted with her care that is just so heartbreaking.

* Meanwhile, McKayla Maroney is facing a $100,000 for violating her NDA with USA Gymnastics.

* A list of the teen-sex movies that I grew up on in the late 1970s/ 1980s. Keep in mind: Every one of these was considered a *comedy.*

* ‘Every day I am crushed’: the stateless man held without trial by Australia for eight years.

* ICE Keeps Raiding Hospitals and Mistreating Disabled Children. Feds planning massive Northern California immigration sweep to strike against sanctuary laws. DHS and DOJ Want to Arrest Mayors of Sanctuary Cities.

The deepest problem, as I see it, is the underlying assumption that things like the rule of law, the courts, and the Constitution are the things that stop tyranny and authoritarianism in this country.

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) January 15, 2018

Tyrannies in America—especially the most durable and dangerous—are built on the rule of law, the courts, and on constitutionalism.

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) January 15, 2018

* How one employee ‘pushed the wrong button’ and caused a wave of panic. America’s emergency notification systems were first built for war, and then rebuilt for peace. A false alarm in Hawaii shows that they didn’t anticipate how media works in the smartphone era. These are fascinating but I still have every confidence that the explanation we have been given for this event is bullshit and that the truth will come out in a decade or so. Pandemonium and Rage in Hawaii.

* “Wisconsin school apologizes for slavery homework assignment.”

* Foxconn boondoggle nearing $4.5 billion.

* “Almost 35 years ago, she let a stranger hold her newborn. It has haunted her ever since.”

* Activists charged with Confederate statue toppling no longer face felonies.

* Chelsea Manning files to run for U.S. Senate in Maryland.

* The True History of Luke Skywalker’s Monastic Retreat.

* Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea.

* How the Female Stars of The Breakfast ClubFought to Remove a Sexist Scene, and Won.

* Tired of winning. So tired.

oh, like obama didn't cheat on his pregnant 3rd wife w/a porn star, grab numerous women by the pussy, call actual nazis “very fine people,” lie over 2700 times in his first year in office, pass a tax bill to massively enrich himself, endorse a pedophile for the United States Sena

— Ben Wexler (@mrbenwexler) January 16, 2018

* And of course you had me at “Gorgeous Images of the Planet Jupiter.”