Posts Tagged ‘abuse’
Monday Morning Links!
* Mary Karr Reminds the World That David Foster Wallace Abused and Stalked Her, and Nobody Cared.
* They Revealed Harassment Claims Against a Professor, and Were Disciplined.
* The Real Free-Speech Crisis Is Professors Being Disciplined for Liberal Views, a Scholar Finds.
* Millennials Are Way Poorer Than Boomers Ever Were.
* America’s teachers on strike: ‘We are done being the frog that is being boiled.’
* The think piece doesn’t so much diminish art as render it wholly incidental. The mere existence of a work—and the contemporary proliferation of work after work after work—is enough to justify the think piece. The fundamental problem with so much contemporary criticism is that the prospective critic is structurally encouraged to not care, to treat the value of one-or-another book/TV episode/movie as wholly irrelevant to the task of writing about it. Sontag wrote that desperate, interpretive searches for meaning constitute “the compliment that mediocrity pays to genius.” (One thinks of Henry James’s yearning lit-crit protagonist.) The think piece effectively inverts this formulation. Now it is more common to see genius (or perhaps “genius,” the work of people who, to nip a phrase from the controversial and cuttingly mean critic Armond White, “think they think”) pay compliments to mediocrity. The clarity of critical judgment alights on every rotten movie, grating pop singer, or paperback book written for awkward adolescents alive in the throes of their protean horniness, and dissolves, ultimately, into a sprawling field of meaninglessness. It’s not that, following Sontag, erotics has replaced bloodless hermeneutics. It’s that we’re now subject to soft, dopey forms of both. Enormously erudite and intelligent expositions about extremely stupid things have degraded both the standard for writing about serious things and the seriousness of those serious things themselves.
* Yeah, you better run: China bans Peppa Pig because she ‘promotes gangster attitudes.’
* University apologizes to Native American students detained on college tour.
People acting like the college admissions tour is an information process when it is a sales process. There are many reasons why a woman would feel empowered to interrogate two Native boys, to summon the police and to police the tour: she implied she had a valuable exit threat
— Tressie Mc (@tressiemcphd) May 5, 2018
* The man who cracked the lottery.
* Misreading the manufacturing statistics.
pundits love McCain b/c what he actually embodies is a principle they themselves live by: that if you can deliver a compelling story, and strike the right postures of seriousness and tradition, it doesn't matter what monstrosities you help make possible https://t.co/vRUeZN8PXn
— Patrick Blanchfield (@PatBlanchfield) May 6, 2018
* A team of scientists undertakes an ambitious experiment which could change thinking about welfare.
* “In America, you can be too poor to die.”
* And if you follow me on Facebook, you know that I’ve been raving all weekend about Nintendo Labo. Believe the hype! It’s truly great. Like Calvin’s magic cardboard boxes came to life. It’d buy three more kits if they were available, and might eventually buy a second robot one so my kids can play the Vs mode….
It's way too on-the-nose that there's a young woman named Reality locked in a cell incommunicado for trying to tell us about the current state of things and people keep forgetting about it.
— Malcolm Harris (@BigMeanInternet) May 5, 2018
Had you asked me, 25 years ago, how Marx's 200th birthday would be greeted, I'd have said badly or not at all. If you're on the left and don't think the ideological climate has changed dramatically in our favor, you either weren't around back then or you've forgotten everything.
— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) May 5, 2018
It’s been a while, has even a single person read and finished Comey’s book who wasn’t paid to do so
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) May 5, 2018
Written by gerrycanavan
May 7, 2018 at 8:07 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #MeToo, abuse, academia, academic freedom, America, automation, Black Panther, bullshit jobs, Calvin and Hobbes, centrism, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, China, class struggle, criticism, David Foster Wallace, death, Dungeons and Dragons, games, gangster attitudes, Herland, How the University Works, Infinite Jest, intergenerational warfare, James Comey, John McCain, Junot Díaz, Killmonger, Killmonger's mom, lottery, manufacturing, Marx, Marxism, militarism, millennials, misogyny, Native Americans, neoliberalism, Nintendo, Nintendo Labo, Nintendo Switch, outsourcing, Peppa Pig, politics, poverty, race, racism, Reality Winner, Satanism, sexism, stalking, statistics, strikes, Susan Sontag, teaching, the Moon, thinkpieces, Title IX, unions, Utopia, welfare, whiteness, writing
Friday Morning Links!
* ICYMI! SFFTV CFP: “When the Astronaut is a Woman: Beyond the Frontier in Film and Television.” At the link there’s also details for SFFTV’s year-round reading period.
* Climate Scientists Warn That All Super Mario Levels Will Be Underwater by 2025.
* Okay, but it’s only barely half.
* Ethnic cleansing remains the one arena of policy where this White House can focus. Emboldened by Trump, U.S. Border Officials Are Lying to Asylum Seekers and Turning Them Away.
* Trump Lawyer Marc Kasowitz Threatens Stranger in Emails: ‘Watch Your Back , Bitch.’
* I sincerely hope the lawsuits associated with this pronouncement bankrupt Anthem.
* Game of Thrones fan fiction getting serious now.
* At the end of the second Obama administration, there seemed to be more time and world in which to noodle around with those questions than there is today. In this new age of anxiety and emergency, existential threats seem very close indeed. Our own game of thrones has taken a terrifying turn. Winter is other people.
* It is ridiculous how beyond debate the collusion case has become and how little it matters anyway.
In retrospect Dems should have just cooked up argument it’s unconstitutional to repeal Obamacare. GOP showed it doesn’t matter if it’s true.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 14, 2017
Nuke-the-sky lawsuits over repeal’s constitutionality, explaining how blue states will refuse to implement, promising single payer, etc.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 13, 2017
* Why Are We So Unwilling to Take Sylvia Plath at Her Word?
* SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (dir. John Hughes, 2017). This will definitely hold up in court. I hope this is still legally binding. At this point I’d at least hear them out. When you stare too long into the abyss. From A to Z.
Amazing post. Zuckerberg is going to extraordinary lengths to connect with average Americans. pic.twitter.com/ELBXean4rw
— Pixelated Boat (@pixelatedboat) July 14, 2017
in the future, every famous person will be President of the United States for 15 minutes
— Gavin Mueller (@gavinmuellerphd) July 13, 2017
* The war on drugs goes speculative.
* Income Inequality Will Survive the Nuclear Apocalypse.
* And Here’s Your First Look at an Insanely Detailed Model of Disney’s Star Wars Land.
Written by gerrycanavan
July 14, 2017 at 8:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with abuse, academia, adjunctification, adjuncts, AHCA, amusement parks, apocalypse, astronauts, Barack Obama, Batman, bullying, bunkers, CFPs, class struggle, climate change, collusion, DEA, deportation, Disney, Disney World, Donald Trump, dragons, Duke, ecology, English majors, ethnic cleansing, Facebook, futurity, Game of Thrones, general election 2016, George R. R. Martin, health insurance, Hobbes, How the University Works, immigration, income inequality, Islamophobia, John Hughes, Mark Zuckerberg, mobbing, nationalism, nuclear war, nuclearity, poetry, politics, Putin, Russia, science fiction, Science Fiction Film and Television, Silence of the Lambs, Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Star Wars, Super Mario, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, the courts, the law, unions, Venn diagrams, war on drugs, when you stare too long into the abyss the abyss stares back into you, women
Monday Morning Links
* I was delighted to find Octavia E. Butler on Locus’s 2016 Recommended Reading List. And you can vote for it as nonfiction book of the year! Make Ursula work for it.
* Eight works of science fiction that present tyrants (not all of them human).
* I’d taken England off my list of countries to flee to, but perhaps I could be coaxed.
* Madness at the National Security Council. The Spy Revolt Against Trump. ‘A Sense of Dread’ for Civil Servants Shaken by Trump Transition. How To Deal with Reichstag Fire Fears in the Age of Trump. Twilight of Mike Flynn. Meanwhile, Trump is doing international diplomacy in the public dining room at Mar-a-Lago. “We have at most a year to defend American democracy, perhaps less.” Trump’s two-year presidency. Two years. Jesus. Shitgibbon.
* One of the great achievements of free society in a stable democracy is that many people, for much of the time, need not think about politics at all. The president of a free country may dominate the news cycle many days — but he is not omnipresent — and because we live under the rule of law, we can afford to turn the news off at times. A free society means being free of those who rule over you — to do the things you care about, your passions, your pastimes, your loves — to exult in that blessed space where politics doesn’t intervene. In that sense, it seems to me, we already live in a country with markedly less freedom than we did a month ago. It’s less like living in a democracy than being a child trapped in a house where there is an abusive and unpredictable father, who will brook no reason, respect no counter-argument, admit no error, and always, always up the ante until catastrophe inevitably strikes. This is what I mean by the idea that we are living through an emergency.
* We have been shy about stating the obvious: that something is terribly and uniquely wrong with this president. His powers weaponise the problem. We can all see it. We can all feel it, too. Donald Trump is the walking, talking, hate-tweeting embodiment of the howling identity crisis afflicting the entire United States.
* Federal agents conduct immigration enforcement raids in at least six states. What it’s like to be arrested by ICE. Fear and panic. Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos’ deportation to Mexico from Arizona this week was the last chapter of a long nightmare for her family. It began in 2008 with a knock on the door by sheriff’s officers. And they finally found an undocumented immigrant who voted. For Abdulkarim Jimale, escape was the only way to survive. Trump’s immigration order means bureaucrats have to decide who’s a “real” Christian. #KnowYourRights. What Geology Has to Say About Building a 1,000-Mile Border Wall. How big a deviation is this from Obama?
* The initial estimate is here: Trump’s wall will cost more than a year of the space program that we’re also not going to have anymore.
* Asylum seekers fleeing the US into Canada. Losing Hope in U.S., Migrants Make Icy Crossing to Canada. Newcomer centre has no more room for border-crossing refugees.
* Revealed: FBI terrorism taskforce investigating Standing Rock activists.
* Shock report: Republicans are completely morally depraved. But don’t worry, the Democrats have got this.
* Everything is about Trump now.
* Well, it’s come to this: a geoengineering plan to refreeze the Arctic Circle. We may live in a post-truth era, but nature does not. Simple equation shows how human activity is trashing the planet.
As for hedge funds and other high-cost alternatives, “the whole two-and-20 model” — in which investors typically pay 2 percent of assets under management and 20 percent of any gains — “is ridiculous,” Mr. Morris said. “The cost structure is outrageous. As they say on Wall Street, ‘Where are the customers’ yachts?’ I’m not going to play that game.”
* A US-born NASA scientist was detained at the border until he unlocked his phone.
* Hello old friends: Foreground objects in adventure game scenery.
* lol x2: Geraldo Rivera quits post after Yale removes slavery supporter’s name.
* Amazon now controls 46% of all e-commerce in the United States.
* A brief history of the gerrymander.
* Why does the United States still let 12-year-olds get married?
* How American women fell behind Japanese women in the workplace.
* A brief history of punching Nazis in Marvel Comics.
* AI and the end of the middle class.
* Rio’s Olympic Park, 6 months after games.
* Reframing Faculty Criticisms of Student Activism.
* Milwaukee offers America’s longest-lived experiment with urban-school vouchers, but their mixed legacy is not a story you’ll frequently hear from lawmakers and advocates currently championing the spread of private school–choice programs across the country.
* Double majoring will not save you. Only the great god STEM will save you. All praise STEM!
* And this is great, like everything they do: Arnie, Usidore, and Chunt play Gauntlet.
Written by gerrycanavan
February 13, 2017 at 9:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #NoDAPL, 25th Amendment, abuse, academia, activism, Amazon, America, artificial intelligence, authoritarianism, autocracy, Barack Obama, border patrol, Brazil, Captain America, charter schools, class struggle, collapse, comics, Congress, democrac, Democrats, deportation, Donald Trump, double majors, dystopia, ecology, endowments, England, fascism, FBI, games, Gauntlet, geoengineering, Geraldo Rivera, gerrymandering, Harry Potter, hedge funds, Hello from the Magic Tavern, How the University Works, ice, ice sheet collapse, immigration, Japan, John C. Calhoun, kids, kids today, Locus, Mark Fisher, marriage, Mars, Marvel, mental illness, Michael Flynn, Milwaukee, misogyny, morality, Mr. Me, my scholarly empire, NASA, national security, Nazis, neoliberalism, Octavia Butler, Olympics, ouer space, parenting, podcasts, police, politics, post-truth, protest, rape culture, refugees, Reichstag fire, resistance, Russia, Santa Clarita Diet, scams, science fiction, sexism, Springsteen, Standing Rock, STEM, student movements, the Arctic, the economy, the Singularity, totalitarianism, tyranny, vaccination, war on education, y impeachment, Yale, zombies, zunguzungu
Far Too Many Monday Morning Links, Sorry
* The Imaginary Worlds podcast did a recent episode on the legacy of Octavia Butler.
* N.K. Jemisin has a plan for diversity in science fiction.
* The best McSweeney’s link in years, maybe ever: “A Poem about Your University’s Brand New Institute.”
* The value-added English major: Book up for a longer life: readers die later, study finds.
* Cloud Atlas ‘astonishingly different’ in US and UK editions, study finds.
* Group projects in the college classroom from Ramzi Fawaz.
* Call for applications: The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award.
* China Miéville and the Politics of Surrealism.
* Violence Breaks Out in Milwaukee Following Officer-Involved Shooting. More details. Sheriff Clarke and Scott Walker Call in the National Guard. And from the archives: Wisconsin named worst state for black Americans. Wisconsin Prisons Incarcerate Most Black Men In U.S. Wisconsin graduation gap between white and black students largest in the country. ‘Back in time 60 years’: America’s most segregated city. Why Is Milwaukee So Bad For Black People? Milwaukee County and the Unelectable Whiteness of Scott Walker. And a message from MUPD.
Overnight totals:
4 injured officers
17 arrests
7 squads damaged, 2 totaled
48 ShotSpotter activations
6 businesses set on fire— Milwaukee Police (@MilwaukeePolice) August 14, 2016
* Unprecedented flooding, again, this time in Louisiana (again).
This is fine. pic.twitter.com/uJawEv7mo7
— John Overholt (@john_overholt) August 11, 2016
* Everything is fucked: The syllabus.
* The Republican War on Public Universities.
* Uber U.
* So Your Kid’s A Medieval Studies Major? Relax.
* The discovery of Hawaii Sign Language in 2013 amazed linguists. But as the number of users dwindles, can it survive the twin threats of globalisation and a rift in the community?
* One in seven U.S. households has a negative net worth.
* The Average Black Family Would Need 228 Years to Build the Wealth of a White Family Today.
* Meanwhile, on the Trump beat: The Entertainment Candidate. My Crazy Year with Trump. Here’s how I’ll teach Trump to my college students this fall. A Republican intellectual explains why the Republican Party is going to die. On Decency. Inside the Failing Mission to Tame Donald Trump’s Tongue. Former supporters describe their ‘last straw’ when it came to Trump. The Ten Point Line. Even if Polling Tightens, Where Is Donald Trump’s 270th Electoral Vote? Presidential candidates leading polls at this point in the campaign have almost always won. What A Clinton Landslide Would Look Like. What would it take for the House to flip? News Organizations Ask NY State Supreme Court to Unseal Trump’s 1990 Divorce Records. Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief. I didn’t blog for a few days and the “Second Amendment People” thing already seems like a million years ago. It’s unreal.
* Twitter, or, a honeypot for assholes.
* Polls suggest Iceland’s Pirate party may form next government.
first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then they google to make sure it’s actually THAT pirate party
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) August 13, 2016
* The four basic personality types, by way of the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
* Why Did a University Quarter Police and Soldiers in Its Dorms? Stay for the paean to the Third Amendment. It’s making a comeback, my friends!
The drug war has enabled civilian police forces to militarize their tactics and technology up to the level of the armed forces. Police departments are now standing armies of “warrior cops” that largely crusade against Black low-level drug dealers and their Black consumers, with little regard for their non-Black suppliers. These militarized police officers are Third Amendment “soldiers” by any reasonable construction.
* New detail emerge on Star Trek: Discovery. I’m really not in love with the pre-TOS prequel angle — didn’t they already make that mistake? — but the rest seems reasonably promising. Meanwhile, in the next universe over: The Star Trek TV Shows That Never Happened.
* The researchers calculated that the ship could reach five percent the speed of light (0.05 c), resulting in roughly a 90-year travel time to Alpha Centauri. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which forbade nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, and the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which forbade nuclear explosive devices in space, effectively ended Orion.
* An Earth-like Planet Might Be Orbiting Proxima Centauri.
* NASA unveils 6 prototypical deep space human habitats for Mars and beyond.
* A mysterious object has been discovered beyond Neptune with an inexplicable orbit. I’ll be honest: I’m all in on Niku.
* All alone in No Man’s Sky, an incomprehensibly vast universe simulator.
* It’s So Hot Out Cockroaches Might Start Flying in NYC.
* This “proton radius puzzle” suggests there may be something fundamentally wrong with our physics models. And the researchers who discovered it have now moved on to put a muon in orbit around deuterium, a heavier isotope of hydrogen. They confirm that the problem still exists, and there’s no way of solving it with existing theories.
* Dystopia now: The latest technological innovation for data-hungry hedge funds is a fleet of five dozen shoebox-sized satellites.
* The Invisible Labor of Women’s Studies.
* Perhaps it might be time to abandon altogether the idea of childbirth as a moral experience? Resisting the application of prospective and retrospective judgment, appraisal, and categories of “good” and “bad” altogether: can we imagine birth outside of these assignations? Is there a way for us to hold on to the monstrosity of childbirth? To look directly at Winthrop’s descriptions, refuse his hateful moralizing yet cradle those monstrous lumps?
* Lawns are a soul-crushing timesuck and most of us would be better off without them.
* Study Links Police Bodycams to Increase in Shooting Deaths.
* “When you realize that *all* faculty meetings follow the CIA’s Sabotage Field Manual.”
* Politeness and the end of democracy.
* Rethinking family leave policies in academia.
* Chernobyl in the Anthropocene.
* Ice and American exceptionalism.
English has a specific verb for tricking people into listening to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" https://t.co/6Inp9xNJ4n
— AllThingsLinguistic (@AllThingsLing) August 14, 2016
* Olympics minute! Saluting race-walking. Why Aren’t Long Jumpers Jumping Longer? The Olympics and climate change. This Is Why There Are So Many Ties In Swimming. There’s never been a state-controlled doping system that we know of, of this size. Why does Puerto Rico have its own team? Why bronze medalists are happier than silver medalists, and other things the Olympics teaches us about human emotions.
* Prime real-estate on the Moon (and how to seize it).
* But even as new insights emerge from both the physical and social sciences, a longstanding argument over whether or not addiction is a disease prevents researchers from identifying effective treatment strategies. The “disease model” remains dominant among medical researchers as well as in the treatment community. But it is not universally embraced, and some researchers think it gets in the way of fresh ideas about how to help people.
* An Open Letter to My Future Daughter.
* 8/11 is 72 cents on the dollar, please cite me in all future thinkpieces.
CONSPIRACY THEORY:
AUSTRALIA IS SCOOBY DOO pic.twitter.com/BJvqgK8USd— anna (@ttylgay) August 10, 2016
* Cost of Lead Poisoning in Flint Now Estimated at $458 Million. It was reported last year that the problem could have been entirely avoided with water treatments on the order of $100/month. Millions Of Americans May Be Drinking Toxic Water, Harvard Study Finds.
* I’m a notorious Jessica Jones Season Two skeptic, but this is promising.
* A Brief History of the Traffic Stop (Or How the Car Created the Police State).
* Is God Transgender? Fascinating op-ed.
* The Ballad of Merrick Garland.
* The Ballad of Mayor McCheese.
* The Man Who Created Bigfoot.
* The secret life of a trade union employee: “I do little but the benefits are incredible.”
* Your Coffee Table Needs This Lavish Collection of Retro UFO Pulp Fiction Art.
* Unsung Architecture Of 1990s Anime.
* The Chimera Quandary: Is It Ethical To Create Hybrid Embryos?
* Eight low-populated U.S. states as boroughs of New York City, or, abolish the Senate.
* Some Editions Of The First Harry Potter Book Contain A Valuable Mistake. I’m a two-wand truther. This is canon and explains everything.
* Making a Murderer‘s Brendan Dassey’s conviction gets tossed, pending the State requesting a new trial.
* MetaFilter vs. the PT Cruiser.
* ‘Hot’ Sex & Young Girls at the New York Review of Books.
* Generate your own random fantasy maps. @UnchartedAtlas.
* Six Proposals for the Reform of Literature in the Age of Climate Change.
* The Moral Machine is a website from MIT that presents 13 traffic scenarios in which a self-driving car has no choice but to kill one set of people or another. Your job is to tell the car what to do.
* Why does DC Comics hate Lois Lane?
* Why has this summer blockbuster season been so bad?
* ‘Suicide Squad’ suffers major drop in second weekend, still wins box office. And a perverse provocation: Suicide Squad is an artistic statement, “The DC Cinematic Universe Finding Its Voice.”
* Ghostbusters sequel unlikely as studio prepares to eat $70 million loss.
* This Open Letter by an Alleged Former Warner Bros. Employee Rages at Top Executives.
* The Three-Body Problem Play Adaptation is a 3D Multimedia Spectacle for the Stage. More here.
* I Made a Shipwreck Expert Watch The Little Mermaid And Judge Its Nautical Merits.
* Paul McCartney: The Rolling Stone Interview.
* The Thiel saga continues: Ex-Gawker Editor On The Verge Of Bankruptcy After Hulk Hogan’s Lawyers Freeze His Assets.
* Years late, this week I finally finished reading Chris Ware’s The Last Saturday, which I loved (of course).
* On Moirai, the experimental mini-game of the moment.
* Listen, man, animals have a lot of problems.
* Some people just see farther.
* And it’s all I think about now, too.
I saw this yesterday and I've been thinking about it ever since pic.twitter.com/S2RVoBswyJ
— sam (@SamSt3bbins) May 16, 2016
Written by gerrycanavan
August 15, 2016 at 9:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #BlackLivesMatter, abolish the Senate, abuse, academia, addiction, alcoholism, aliens, American exceptionalism, anagrams, animals, anime, architecture, austerity, Australia, Barack Obama, Bigfoot, body cameras, books, bronze medals, Bryan Fuller, Case Western, CFPs, cheating, Chernobyl, childbirth, chimera, China, China Miéville, Chris Ware, CIA, Cixin Liu, class struggle, climate change, Cloud Atlas, cockroaches, comics, CWRU, David Mitchell, DC Comics, deafness, decency, democracy, disease, Disney, diversity, divorce, Donald Trump, doping, drugs, dystopia, ecology, Electoral College, English majors, epistemic closure, ethics, faculty meetings, family leave, fantasy, feminism, film, Flint, flooding, FMLA, game theory, games, Gawker, general election 2016, girlhood, God, group writing assignments, groupwork, guns, Harry Potter, Hawaii, Hawaii Sign Language, Hillary Clinton, homelessness, How the University Works, Hulk Hogan, human-animal hybrids, ice, Iceland, immortality, institutes, James Tiptree Jr., Jessica Jones, karate, Kenny Baker, language, lawns, lead, lead poisoning, license plates, linguistics, literature, Lois Lane, long jump, Louisiana, mad science, Making a Murderer, maps, Marquette, Mars, mass extinction, Mayor McCheese, McDonald's, McSweeney's, Mebane, medieval studies, mental health, mental illness, Merrick Garland, MetaFilter, Michigan, Milwaukee, misogyny, MIT, Moirai, money, monstrosity, movies, Mr. Burns, muons, music, N.K. Jemisin, NASA, neoliberalism, New York City, Niku, No Man's Sky, North Carolina, nuclear weapons, nuclearity, NYC, Ocean's Eight, Octavia Butler, Olympics, online harassment, Orion, outer space, Paul McCartney, pedagogy, personality, Peter Thiel, physics, Pirate Party, podcasts, poetry, police, police violence, politeness, politics, polls, pregnancy, prisoner's dilemma, protons, Proxima Centauri, PT Cruisers, public universities, Puerto Rico, pulse drive, R2-D2, race, race-walking, racism, Ramzi Fawaz, Ray Kurzweil, reading, real estate, refrigeration, religion, Republican National Convention, Republicans, revenge, rickrolling, riots, sabotage, science fiction, Scooby Doo, segregation, self-driving cards, self-driving cars, sex, sexism, shipwrecks, silver medals, sports, Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Wars, street signs, suicide, Suicide Squad, superheroes, Supreme Court, surrealism, surveillance society, syllabus, teaching, television, tenure, the Anthropocene, the Beatles, The Last Days of New Paris, The Last Saturday, The Little Mermaid, the Moon, The Night Of, the Senate, The Simpsons, the Singularity, The Three-Body Problem, the truth is out there, the Universe, Third Amendment, this is fine, ties, totality, traffic stops, trans* issues, Twitter, Uber, UFOs, Ukraine, unions, violence, voting, water, wealth, weather, white privilege, whiteness, wilderness, Wisconsin, women's studies, words, writing
Wednesday Morning Links!
* The names of the five professors who rank lowest on their institution’s evaluation for the semester, but who scored above the minimum threshold of performance, shall be published on the institution’s internet site and the student body shall be offered an opportunity to vote on the question of whether any of the five professors will be retained as employees of the institution. The employment of the professor receiving the fewest votes approving retention shall be terminated by the institution regardless of tenure status or contract.
* In terms of depression levels, results from the 790 graduate students who responded to the survey showed that 47 percent of Ph.D. students reached the 10 of 30 points on the scale to be considered depressed. Only 37 percent of master’s students did so.
* Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: An Analysis of Theodore Beale and his Supporters. Maybe the last word on Puppygate.
* Cool project from Marquette students: Free Shakespeare in Wisconsin State Parks This Summer.
* A New York court has (at least implicitly) recognized chimpanzees as persons under the law.
* 1.5 Million Missing Black Men.
* At the Supreme Court, where the limits of police power are established, Mr. Holder’s Justice Department has supported police officers every time an excessive-force case has made its way to arguments. Even as it has opened more than 20 civil rights investigations into local law enforcement practices, the Justice Department has staked out positions that make it harder for people to sue the police and that give officers more discretion about when to fire their guns.
* Dr. Irwin Schatz, the first, lonely voice against infamous Tuskegee study, dies at 83.
* What’s lost in the immigration debate.
* Inside St. Louis County’s Predatory Night Courts.
* Ten Celebrities Who Did Time in Milwaukee.
* Declassified CIA Document Reveals Iraq War Had Zero Justification.
* Twitter announces crackdown on abuse with new filter and tighter rules.
* Ms. Marvel may be coming to TV.
* So might — no, listen, I just can’t.
* Because you demanded it! We’ll finally get to see some Bothans die.
* Even more lesser-known trolley problems.
The Time Traveler
There’s an out of control trolley speeding towards a worker. You have the ability to pull a lever and change the trolley’s path so it hits a different worker. The different worker is actually the first worker ten minutes from now.
* Fifty years ago, this prosperous Pennsylvania coal town was ripped apart by a devastating subterranean mine fire. Today, the flames still burn in Centralia.
* John Deere says they really only sell an implied license to use the tractor.
* The New York Times loves Fun Home: The Musical.
* In court that day, the judge asked the boy, “Are you afraid?” No, the boy said.
Pipes says the judge seemed surprised, and asked, “Why not?”
The boy glanced at Pipes and the other bikers sitting in the front row, two more standing on each side of the courtroom door, and told the judge, “Because my friends are scarier than he is.”
* Warning, infected inside, do not enter: zombies and the liberal arts.
* This company’s greatest asset is people.
* The next tech bubble is about to burst.
* It’s the little things: Agoraphobic Grandma Finally Leaves Home, Immediately Falls Down Manhole.
Written by gerrycanavan
April 22, 2015 at 7:30 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #disrupt, #innovate, abuse, academia, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., agoraphobia, aliens, animal personhood, animal rights, bikers, bubble economies, canon, capitalism, child abuse, chimpanzees, CIA, coal, comics, continuity, cyberbullying, cyrogenics, Department of Justice, depression, Don't mention the war, drama, ecology, Expanded Universe, Fun Home, Galaxy Quest, games, gay rights, graduate student life, grandmas, homelessness, How the University Works, Hugo awards, Hunger Games, Iceman, immigration, Iowa, Iraq, John Deere, manholes, Mara Jade, Marquette, Marvel, millennials, Milwaukee, Ms. Marvel, musicals, mutants, New York, Pennsylvania, police brutality, police state, police violence, prequels, prison-industrial complex, race, racism, Rogue One, Sad Puppies, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science, science fiction, SETI, Shakespeare, Should I go to grad school?, Silicon Valley, Star Wars, student evaluations, superheroes, tech economy, tenure, the courts, The Last of Us, the law, time travel, trolley problems, Tuskegee, Twitter, Vox Day, Wisconsin, Won't somebody think of the children?, X-Men, zombies
Thursday Links!
* I’ll be speaking next Thursday at “Between Activism and Apocalypse: The Work of Margaret Atwood” at Indiana University. The schedule for the symposium is here.
* CFP: Stage The Future 2: The Second International Conference on Science Fiction Theatre.
* SF short-short of the day: Isaac Asimov’s “Silly Asses.”
* Here’s the calendar of events for C21 this semester.
* “Things like computer vision are starting to work; speech recognition is starting to work There’s quite a bit of acceleration in the development of AI systems,” says Bart Selman, a Cornell professor and AI ethicist who was at the event with Musk. “And that’s making it more urgent to look at this issue.” AI Has Arrived, and That Really Worries the World’s Brightest Minds.
* Of course it’s already worse than you think.
* Elsewhere in mad billionaire news: Internet! in! Spaaaaaaaaaaaaace!
* Gender Differences in the Road to the Doctoral Degree. Less support, more debt, more time to degree.
* Forbidden Planet reviews Richard McGuire’s incredible graphic novel Here.
* Hours After State Of The Union, Senate Targets National Parks. Once again, it’s always worse than you think.
* Saul Goodman, the last difficult man.
* A smart observation from Peter Paik: “Common Core teaches students that there is only one way to read a text (to glean information) but there are many ways to solve a math problem (the target of much outrage on social media).”
* Some Colleges Are Moving Past Eve Ensler’s “Cisnormative” ‘Vagina Monologues’ — And That’s OK.
* Milestone Media rides again.
* How ‘Harry Potter’ fans won a four-year fight against child slavery.
* English professors combine areas of study for new specialization.
The department, known for its expertise in disability and LGBT studies, is looking to newer faculty to blend the two topics into a common subject area.Robert McRuer, who chairs the English department, said he was the first scholar to combine LGBT studies with disability studies and call it “crip theory.” The theory looks at the histories of and issues within the LGBT and disabled communities, which have both faced marginalization. “Crip” is a term that people with disabilities have “reclaimed,” he said.
Personally I’d send that name back for another round of workshopping, but what do I know.
* Oregon Was Founded As a Racist Utopia.
* I actually always thought Joss should have had a David Boreanaz cameo in the background of the Firefly pilot and then never mention it again.
* Marvel is teasing a big Crisis-on-Infinite-Earths-style reboot, for the first time in its history.
* Simon Pegg is co-writing Star Trek 3. [raises one eyebrow]
* And great news for KSR fans: J. Michael Straczynski To Write Spike TV’s ‘Red Mars’ Drama Series Project.
* Violent crime on college campuses is decreasing, but the number of sworn and armed police officers on campuses continues to rise, according to a new report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics… Nearly 70 percent of colleges and universities operated full law-enforcement agencies in 2012, and 94 percent of those officers are authorized to use a firearm.
* Meanwhile, on the town and gown beat: NYU decided not to report an attempted murder to the police.
* Abolish college sports watch: Before Gary Andersen goes on, he wants to make one thing clear. A part of his surprising departure from Wisconsin had to do with admission standards.
* When choosing between doing good and doing evil, don’t forget there’s always a third option.
* Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
* And a reminder that SFFTV is looking for your submission for its “Star Trek at 50″ special issue.
Written by gerrycanavan
January 22, 2015 at 8:30 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with abuse, academia, AI, Angel, Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Cabin in the Woods, Center for 21st Century Studies, CFPs, charts, Cheryl Abbate, choice, climate change, college football, college sports, comics, common core, disability studies, droids, ecology, Elon Musk, English professors, fan activism, fandom, fantasy, feminism, Firefly, freedom, gender, grad student nightmares, Harry Potter, hate mail, Here, How the University Works, Indiana University, Isaac Asimov, J. Michael Straczynski, Joss Whedon, Kim Stanley Robinson, literature, Maddaddam, Margaret Atwood, Marquette, Marvel, math, Milestone Comics, misogyny, my scholarly empire, national parks, NCAA, nuclear weapons, nuclearity, NYU, Occupy, Oregon, outer space, over-educated literary theory PhDs, PhDs, queer theory, race, racism, reboots, Red Mars, Richard McGuire, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science fiction, Science Fiction Film and Television, sexism, silly asses, Simon Pegg, slavery, Star Trek, Star Trek 3, Star Wars, student debt, superheroes, syllabi, the Internet, the Senate, the Singularity, theater, trans* issues, true crime, University of Wisconsin, usability, UWM, Vagina Monologues, war on education, white supremacy, Wisconsin
Closing All My Tabs Friday Morning Links!
* The first review I’ve seen of Green Planets says “it was just okay for me dog.” Hopefully the praise in the next one will be a little less qualified…
* How much does it cost to recruit a single college athlete?
* The results are readily apparent. The overwhelming number of retractions due to flawed methodology, flawed approach, and general misconduct over the last decade is staggering. Stories in almost every field have seen a rash of inaccuracies. The percentage of scientific articles retracted because of fraud has increased tenfold since 1975.
* When Samuel R. Delany wrote Wonder Woman.
* A brief history of a Title IX.
* Ask An Elderly Black Woman As Depicted By A Sophomore Creative Writing Major.
* But the biggest fundamental problem with the administration’s proposed ratings system is that it presents market principles as the cure for an illness that is itself caused by the indiscriminate application of market-mad nostrums to a context (education) where they don’t belong.
* ‘There Will Be No World Cup’: Brazil on the Brink.
* Norfolk, Virginia could be the first city we lose to climate change. Vox voxplains and revoxplains why we’re doomed, but never gets around to considering that flogging away uselessly in the same failed institutions might not be the answer.
* The coming grim death future has given us one gift, though: Darren Aronofsky Adapting Futuristic ‘MaddAddam’ Book Trilogy As HBO Series.
* “Fixing” America’s schools “means changing America.”
* In other words, Louie is sketching out the psychology of an abuser by making us recognize abuse in someone we love. Someone thoughtful and shy, raising daughters of his own, doing his best. Someone totally cognizant of the issues that make him susceptible to the misogyny monster. Someone who thinks hard about women and men and still gets it badly wrong.
* Obama won’t take simple anti-corporate tax reform action he could institute unilaterally today. I suppose it’ll probably always be a mystery.
* Today in the rule of law: Attorney for teen set up by FBI in terror sting kicked out of courtroom while secret evidence is discussed. Judge Threatens, Allegedly Attacks Public Defender During Hearing. The public defender is very happy that cops are being sent to harass people who request public defenders.
* LAPD’s new air drone program will respect privacy. Well , that’s a relief!
* Prosecutors say two 12-year-old southeastern Wisconsin girls stabbed their 12-year-old friend nearly to death in the woods to please a mythological creature they learned about online. The two girls will be tried as adults because they’re making such mature, clear-headed decisions.
* Elsewhere in Wisconsin justice: this twenty-five-year sentence for a woman who smothered her toddler will send a strong message of deterrence for any other mothers who want to murder their kids.
* Toddler Burned by SWAT Grenade After Raid On Home.
* My beloved alma mater in the news! Judge Orders Case Western to Grant Diploma to Medical Student.
* The Secret Service wants to build a computer that can detect sarcasm. Maybe the computer could then explain it to Twitter users?
* Football Hall of Famer Dan Marino sues NFL over concussions.
* LEGO to launch female scientists series after online campaign.
* This seems so nutty to me. I think I probably spent half my childhood wandering around in the woods without supervision and the other half in the back seat of a locked car.
* Solving the Fermi paradox: Sufficiently Advanced Civilizations May Invariably Leave Our Universe. Or maybe they’re hacking reality and we can’t understand that’s what they’re doing.
* A Hong Kong VC fund has just appointed an algorithm to its board.
* “Ann B. Davis stood, walked over to the trash can, and emptied her tray. She walked out of the cafeteria and into a small, gray town near Pittsburgh. I wanted her to *be* Alice. I wanted her to smile as if she loved me. I wanted her to say, ‘Buck up, kiddo, everything’s going to be all right.’ And what I’m trying to tell you now is this: I grew up in a split-level ranch-style house outside a town that could have been anywhere. I grew up in front of a television. I would have believed her.” RIP, Ann B. Davis.
* Steven Moffat hires zero female writers for Doctor Who — for the fourth season in a row.
* Loaded Handgun Found in Target Toy Aisle.
* (Even More) South African Genre Fiction.
* The government plans to fix the NSA scandal by making it all legal.
* What is even the payoff for shining a laser at a plane? That’s bananas.
* Europe has thought it over, and they’re sticking with kings.
* The kids are all right: Two sixth grade math classes lost an entire week’s worth of instruction taking a trial run of a new test and now they want payment for their time.
* On Sept. 13, 1848, at around 4:30 p.m., the time of day when the mind might start wandering, a railroad foreman named Phineas Gage filled a drill hole with gunpowder and turned his head to check on his men. It was the last normal moment of his life.
* Cleveland Politician Proposes Tying Stadium Money To Wins.
* I can’t imagine how colleges could do mandatory mental health screenings right, but less how badly they’d screw it up by trying to do it on the cheap.
* There are dozens of us! The AV Club rediscovers The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
* And George R.R. Martin says Game of Thrones was always intended to be 3 5 7 8 12 books.
Written by gerrycanavan
June 6, 2014 at 8:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with abuse, academia, academic jobs, Afghanistan, aliens, America, Ann B. Davis, artificial intelligence, austerity, Barack Obama, Big Medicine, Big Pharma, Brady Bunch, Brazil, capitalism, charter schools, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, Cleveland, climate change, college sports, concussions, creative writing, cultural relativism, CVs, CWRU, Dan Marino, Darren Aronofsky, Doctor Who, Don't mention the war, donestic violence, drines, ecology, Edward Snowden, Europe, Fermi paradox, film, football, Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, Green Planets, guns, HBO, hedge funds, Hong Kong, How the University Works, kids today, Kim Stanley Robinson, LAPD, lasers, LEGO, Leonardo da Vinci, Louie, Louis CK, Maddaddam, mental health, military-industrial complex, Milwaukee, misogyny, monarchy, murder, my media empire, NCAA, neoliberalism, NFL, Norfolk, NSA, Oryx and Crake, our brains work in interesting ways, parenting, Phineas Gage, police state, police violence, politics, prison-industrial complex, public defenders, race, rape, rape culture, rule of law, Samuel R. Delany, sarcasm, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science, science fiction, scientific fraud, Secret Service, sexism, South Africa, spousal hires, stadiums, standardized testing, Steven Moffat, surveillance society, surveillance state, Target, taxes, television, the courts, the law, the Left, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, time, Title IX, tried as adults, true crime, Twitter, Virginia, war on education, Wes Anderson, Wisconsin, wisdom of markets, Wonder Woman, World Cup
Thursday Forever
* Thursday at C21: Christopher Newfield, “The Humanities in the Post-Capitalist University.” Then, this weekend, elsewhere at UWM: After Capitalism.
* I have a short piece on “WALL-E and Utopia,” pulled from the Green Planets intro, up today for In Media Res’s Pixar week. I also owe SF Signal a post that should go up … eventually that’s also in conversation with the Green Planets stuff (though not cribbed quite so directly).
* The humanities and citation.
* White House petition: abolish the capitalist mode of production.
* More acutely, when you consider the math that McKibben, the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) all lay out, you must confront the fact that the climate justice movement is demanding that an existing set of political and economic interests be forced to say goodbye to trillions of dollars of wealth. It is impossible to point to any precedent other than abolition. Great piece from Chris Hayes.
* College towns and income inequality.
* But, clearly, if we can afford such a massive increase in professional staff, as well as such an increase in executives whose salaries have been escalating very dramatically, the sharp decrease in the percentage of all instructional faculty who are tenured or on tenure tracks is a matter of a dramatic shift in priorities—in the conception of the university.
* Gasp! At Elite Colleges, Legacy Status May Count More Than Was Previously Thought.
* On the disinvestment/reinvestment cycle. Returns to university endowments 1980-2010. The Soul of Student Debt. Against anonymous student evaluation.
* Vice interviews Matt Taibbi on his new book The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.
* Understanding Wonder Woman, at LARoB.
* When Spider-Man fought misleading sex education.
* Could Mystery Science Theater return?
* How the Super-Rich Really Make Their Money.
* Companies used to borrow in the markets as a last resort finance investment in their business. Now it’s a front for shareholder giveaways.
* Capitalism and Nazism: Now It Can Be Told.
* The school, called Explore + Discover, will be available to children between the ages of 3 months and 2 years. Tuition is $2,791/month for kids who attend five days a week. You can also pay $1,990 for three days a week or $1,399 for two days but don’t you love your child?
* For men, having children is a career advantage. For women, it’s a career killer. University managers believe women themselves are primarily responsible for the gender imbalance in higher education, according to research published today.
* There’s Even A Gender Gap In Children’s Allowances.
* “Faculty ignored requests from women and minorities at a higher rate than requests from White males, particularly in higher-paying disciplines and private institutions.” Reviewers will find more spelling errors in your writing if they think you’re black.
* David Foster Wallace Estate Comes Out Against the Jason Segel Biopic. Meanwhile, this insane Lifehacker piece suggests we bracket the whole “suicide” bummer and take David Foster Wallace as our lifecoach.
* Atheist lawsuit claims ‘under God’ in NJ school’s daily pledge recital harms children. I guess I’m just another survivor.
* Wired goes inside Captain Marvel fandom.
* Woman writes about something traditionally regarded as a male-orientated industry or area of interest; if she’s conveying love, she’s doing it “for attention” (so what?) or “fake” (whatever that means); if she criticizes, she’s insulting, whining, moaning, on her period; if she says anything at all, her argument or point is made invisible because her damn biology is getting in the way.
* What That Game of Thrones Scene Says About Rape Culture. George R.R. Martin doesn’t want to talk about it.
* Aaron Sorkin Wants To Apologize To Everyone About The Newsroom.
* Does world government have a future?
* Texas Prisons Are Hot Enough to Kill You.
* #MyNYPD.
* The great Colbert rebranding begins.
* Netflix and Mitch Hurwitz Joining Forces Again.
* Nichelle Nichols Talks with Janelle Monae.
* Game of the night: solar system simulator Super Planet Crash.
* Joss Whedon’s New Film Isn’t in Theaters, But You Can Watch It Online for $5.
* Forrest Gump, as directed by Wes Anderson.
* “The only thing preventing a catastrophe from a ‘city-killer’ sized asteroid is blind luck.”
* Horrific, tragic story out of Rutgers.
* Risk of New York City coastal flooding has surged by factor of 20, says study.
* The latest on the big animal personhood case in New York. Dolphins as alien intelligence.
* That Time Cleveland Released 1.5 Million Balloons and Chaos Ensued.
* CIA torture architect breaks silence to defend ‘enhanced interrogation.’ Facial recognition and the end of freedom. The end of net neutrality and the end of the Internet. Late capitalist subjectivity and the sharing economy.
* Bullied Kids at Risk for Mental Health Problems 40 Years Later.
Written by gerrycanavan
April 24, 2014 at 7:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with Aaron Sorkin, abolition, abuse, academia, administrative blight, Afrofuturism, Airbnb, Alabama, allowances, America, animal personhood, apocalypse, Arrested Development, asteroids, atheism, balloons, brands, Brown v. Board of Education, bullies, capitalism, Captain Marvel, carbon, cashing out, Catholicism, Christopher Newfield, CIA, class struggle, Cleveland, climate change, coastal flooding, Colbert, comics, communism, David Foster Wallace, did you try asking nicely?, disability, disinvestment, divestment, dolphins, ecology, endowments, facial recognition, fandom, Fidel Castro, film, Forrest Gump, fossil fuels, freedom isn't free, Gabriel García Márquez, Game of Thrones, games, gender, George R. R. Martin, Green Planets, How the University Works, income inequality, Janelle Monae, Joss Whedon, kids today, late capitalism, legacy admissions, Letterman, lifehacks, Mars, mass extinction events, Matt Taibbi, mental health, misogyny, Mitch Hurwitz, my media empire, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Nazis, net neutrality, Netflix, New Jersey, New York, Nichelle Nichols, now it can be told, NYPD, one world government, parenthood, pensions, petitions, Pixar, Pledge of Allegiance, police brutality, post capitalism, prison-industrial complex, prisons, race, racism, rape, rape culture, religion, Rutgers, scams, segregation, sex ed, sexism, sharing economy, socialism, Spider-Man, student debt, student evaluations, suicide, Texas, the courts, the humanities, the Internet, the kids are all right, The Late Show, the law, The Newsroom, the Pope, the rich are different from you and me, torture, Uber, Utopia, UWM, Wall-E, war on education, Wes Anderson, Won't somebody think of the children?, Wonder Woman