Remember, Sunday Is Procrastination Day, Always Procrastinate Safely

* CFP: The Science Fiction Research Association Annual Conference, June 2016, Liverpool, England. I’ll be there, talking in some way or another about the world of the great Wisconsin SF writer Clifford D. Simak.

* CFP: In More’s Footsteps: Utopia and Science Fiction.

* #altac: Seattle to pay poet to live in a bridge.

The poet cannot actually live in the bridge… the room where the “living” would take place is not well heated and there is no running water.

* The very weird Dem primary is really heating up. Face It: A Vote for Hillary Clinton Is a Vote for War. That Clinton hasn’t easily put away Sanders should be very worrying for the people assuming she can defeat anyone the Republicans put up.

* Elsewhere on the 2016 election beat.

2007 is when the human species accidentally invented telepathy (via the fusion of twitter, facebook, and other disclosure-induction social media with always-connected handheld internet devices). Telepathy, unfortunately, turns out to not be all about elevated Apollonian abstract intellectualism: it’s an emotion amplifier and taps into the most toxic wellsprings of the subconscious. As implemented, it brings out the worst in us. Twitter and Facebook et al are fine-tuned to turn us all into car-crash rubberneckers and public execution spectators. It can be used for good, but more often it drags us down into the dim-witted, outraged weltanschauung of the mob.

* Kylo Ren, undercover boss.

* How These 5 Famous Billionaires Are Dismantling Black Public Schools.

* NASA Has Opened a Planetary Defense Office to Protect Earth from Cosmic Collisions.

* The New Marvel Universe and Afrofuturism.

* I think I’d rather it was Hellcat, but I’ll take it.

* Springsteen covers “Rebel, Rebel.” Returning a favor, as he says in the video: The real find for that link is probably the Bowie cover of “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City.”

* And another one I fear I may have done before: The Soviet Hobbit (1976).

Weekend Links! Piping Hot!

* Don’t forget! The deadline for the SFFTV special issue on the Mad Max franchise is February 1.

* The local beat! The day Milwaukee almost killed the NFL.

* Expert says Michigan officials changed a Flint lead report to avoid federal action. Bernie calls on Snyder to resign. This is how toxic Flint’s water really is.

* A Bonus Keyword for the Age of Austerity this week: Meritocracy.

* The end of Al Jazeera America.

* NYPD Demands a Mere $36,000 “Copying Fee” for Access to Cops’ Body Cam Footage.

* I don’t want to tell anyone how to do their jobs, but this seems sacrilegious to me.

Anglicans to join Copts and Catholics in talks to finally resolve-centuries long problem of fixing the date of Easter

— John Bingham (@John_Bingham) January 15, 2016

What a time to be alive.

* Lotteryville, USA.

* Rickman, Bowie, and class mobility.

* David Bowie, Nazi.

* Teach the controversy: thebeatlesneverexisted.com

* The latest from KSR: What Will It Take for Humans to Colonize the Milky Way?

* The game’s afoot! Something Is Killing Off America’s Orange Supply.

* The incredible tale of irresponsible chocolate milk research at the University of Maryland.

* A genetic map of the UK.

* Race and the NCAA.

* Girl Suspended for 30 Days Because She Lent Her Inhaler to a Gasping Classmate.

* Throw a save against narcissistic self-regard: “Role-playing Gamers Have More Empathy Than Non-Gamers.”

* Retired Art Teacher Leaves $1.7 Million to the Detroit Institute of Arts.

* Lead and crime, part 83.

* Immediately greenlit.

* 2016 pessimism watch: Democrats are in more trouble than they think. And changing demographics won’t save them.

* For most of human history, the stars told us where we were in space and time. Have we forgotten how to look up?

* My people? 0.0% of Icelanders 25 years or younger believe God created the world, new poll reveals.

* Forever reTumblr.

* And “Late stage capitalism” is the new “Christ, what an asshole.”