What Day Is It? Links

* Later today, at UC Davis: Environments & Societies: Gerry Canavan, “Science Fiction and Utopia in the Anthroposcene.”

* Marquette Protest on Diversity, University Seal.

* The LAO and Permanent University Austerity.

* Proclaims British economist Noreena Hertz, who recently surveyed more than 1,000 teenage girls in the United States and England: “This generation is profoundly anxious.”

* Failing the entire class.

* Rebirth of the Research University.

* Our research indicates children learn 4% more efficiently when being slowly boiled alive.

* Natalia Cecire on resilience and unbreakability.

* The Brutality of Police Culture in Baltimore. The Mysterious Death of Freddie Gray. Nonviolence as Compliance. Images of the Unrest in Baltimore. “I Blame The Department.” “Those Kids Were Set Up.” The Baltimore Riots Didn’t Start the Way You Think. In Freddie Gray’s Baltimore neighborhood, half of the residents don’t have jobs. Why Baltimore Rebelled.

* How Often Do Officers Lie Under Oath?

* Police Cadet Turns in Cop for Turning Body Cam Off Just Before Pummeling his Victim.

* Sneaky crosswalk law in Los Angeles is a tax for the crime of being poor.

* How Photography Was Optimized for White Skin Color.

* The disturbing differences in what men want in their wives and their daughters.

* It was a group assignment for four of them, but one of them did any actual work.

* The Shining, Retold as an Atari 2600 Game.

* If a bug in a slot machine says you’ve won $41.8m, can you claim it? Not in the case of Pauline McKee, 90, denied the payout after Iowa’s supreme court sided with the house.

* I didn’t become a doctor for the money.

* Netflix’s numbers are much less impressive than you would have thought.

* I will burn this fucking place to the ground before I get rid of that mirror.

* The struggle is real: Zoo Keeper Helps Constipated Monkey Pass Peanut By Licking Its Butt For An Hour.

* Your Tumblr of the day: Samplerman.

* “Sucralose, better known as Splenda, and acesulfame potassium, which is often called Ace K”: parent, talk to your kids about drugs.

* Men Accused of Sexual Assault Face Long Odds When Suing Colleges for Gender Bias.

* Jane Goodall Says SeaWorld ‘Should Be Closed Down.’

* Wisconsin’s roads are the third-worst in the nation. That’s pretty grim: how could two different states possibly be worse?

* Sounds like Age of Ultron will disappoint you twice.

* Scenes from the class struggle in California.

* Who created Caitlin Snow on #TheFlash? According to @DCComics, nobody.

* And why not him? The Bernie Sanders Decade.

 

Thursday Links!

* 2015 CFP for the MRG: “Enthusiasm for Revolution.”

* Reminder: Call for Postdoctoral Fellow: Alternative Futurisms.

* Criminalizing parenting.

* The Long, Wondrous Interview with Junot Díaz You Have to Read. By the great Taryne Taylor! From the same issue of Paradoxa that has my essay on Snowpiercer in it.

* Panel Conversation on Afrofutrism between Nnedi Okorafor and Sofia Samatar at the University of Texas.

* Ellen Craft, the Slave Who Posed as a Master and Made Herself Free.

* Having paddled so hard to avoid the Scylla of hyperprofessionalization in English studies, some promoters of alternative careers may not notice that they are in the grip of Charybdis’s hyperprofessionalization of everything else. The harder they paddle, the harder the whirlpool pulls us all down. Great piece from Marc Bousquet addressing a number of key issues in academic labor.

* Universities without Austerity.

* A History of the MLA Job List.

* The headline reads, “UMass Ends Use of Student Informants.”

* Arbitrator places adjunct on the tenure track.

* The Data Sublime.

* Loved Your Nanny Campus? Start-Up Pledges Similar Services for Grads.

* These Two States Will Revoke Your License If You Can’t Pay Back Your Student Loans.

* He put that cartoon up on the classroom whiteboard, and the teacher left it there all day as a lesson in free speech.

* These World Leaders Are a Worse Threat to Free Press Than Terrorism.

* Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Newspaper Edits Female World Leaders Out of Charlie Hebdo March.

* What’s Missing From the Debate on Obama’s Free Community-College Plan.

* The end of the university in Louisiana.

* Elvis vs. the Beatles.

* Malcolm Harris: The Small Miracle You Haven’t Heard About Amid the Carnage in Syria.

* Urick v. Koenig, part two.

* Report: Duke Ignored Warnings on Research Fraud.

* 53 Historians Weigh In on Barack Obama’s Legacy.

* Back to the Future, Time Travel, and the Secret History of the 1980s.

* To be clear, late-night votes might be a bit of a problem for Joseph Morrissey, the newly sworn-in Virginia House delegate who must report to his jail cell about 7:30 each evening.

* Muslim Americans are the staunchest opponents of military attacks on civilians, compared with members of other major religious groups Gallup has studied in the United States. Seventy-eight percent of Muslim Americans say military attacks on civilians are never justified.

* $1 Million Prize for Scientists Who Can Cure Human Aging. Sure, I’ll go in for a few bucks on that.

* Trial by Ebola.

* Too real:  Woman’s Parents Accepting Of Mixed-Attractiveness Relationship.

* What If We Could Live In A World Without War But Way More Famine?

* Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor.

* A Cybernetic Implant That Allows Paralyzed Rats To Walk Again.

* In 2014, Florida recorded at least 346 deaths inside of their prison system, an all-time high for the state in spite of the fact that its overall prison population has hovered around 100,000 people for the five previous years. Hundreds of these deaths from 2014 and from previous years are now under investigation by the DOJ because of the almost unimaginable role law enforcement officers are playing in them.

* Last week: The City Is Reportedly Losing $10 Million a Week Because the NYPD Isn’t Writing Enough Tickets. This week: NYPD Slowdown Turns Into “Broken Windows” Crackdown.

* The point of a strike is to stop production to show the work you do is essential. The NYPD slowdown has proven the opposite.

* The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Time to Shut it Down.

* Every day, cops toss dangerous military-style grenades during raids, with little oversight and horrifying results.

* Albuquerque cop mistakenly guns down undercover narcotics officer during bungled $60 meth bust. Elsewhere in Albuquerque.

* 1 In 3 College Men In Survey Said They Would Rape A Woman If They Could Get Away With It.

* Danny Boyle Having “Serious” Conversations About 28 Months Later. I’m in as long as it’s the first step towards Years.

* Radically unnecessary Avatar sequels reportedly having script problems. What could explain it?

* Frozen in everything, forever and ever amen.

* Seems legit: NASCAR driver says his ex-girlfriend is a trained assassin.

* This Computer Program Is ‘Incapable Of Losing’ At Poker.

* Scholar and activist Glen Coulthard on the connection between indigenous and anticapitalist struggles.

* This seems like glorified Avengers fan fiction but I’m on board. Meanwhile, in Fantastic Four news.

* Ah, there’s my problem: iPhone Separation Anxiety Makes You Dumber, Study Finds.

* I’m you, from the future! At the 16th most popular webcomic.

* They say time is the fire in which we burn.

* The Marquette Tribune is following the ongoing McAdams suspension at the university.

* Study says we prefer singers who look like big babies during good times. This research must be stopped. Some things mankind was never meant to know.

* “To her disappointment she found that the Purchased Products did not even feel different from her regular socks and tights.”

* Community get a premiere date.

* whothefuckismydndcharacter.com.

* And Cookie-Based Research Suggests Powerful People Are Sloppier Eaters. Of course the sloppy among us have always known this.

Super Ultra Mega Monday Links

* That is what America does. It is not broken. That is exactly what is wrong with it. The American Justice System Is Not Broken.

* Why Should Anyone “Respect” the Law?

* Autopsy: Milwaukee cop shot mentally-ill black man from above and behind, 14 times. Wave of Protests After Grand Jury Doesn’t Indict Officer in Eric Garner Chokehold Case. But they did manage to indict the man who filmed the murder. Worse Than Eric Garner: Cops Who Got Away With Killing Autistic Men and Little Girls. Prosecutors throwing grand jury inquiries to save killer cops. NYPD Abuse Increases Settlements Costing City $735 Million. Rookie NYPD cop who shot unarmed black man texted union reps before radioing for help. The cop who murdered Tamir Rice should never have been a cop. Grand Jury Clears Two Former Jasper Cops Who Beat Woman in Jail. Seattle Cop Who Punched a Handcuffed Woman in the Face Won’t Be Charged. Coastal Carolina students detained after writing unapproved chalk messages about Ferguson on campus sidewalks. Cop Fired for Beating a Non-violent, Handcuffed Man On Video, Gets Job Back AND Back Pay. Inside the Twisted Police Department That Kills Unarmed Citizens at the Highest Rate in the Country. The Deadly Self-Pity of the Police. Police Reforms You Should Always Oppose. Being a cop showed me just how racist and violent the police are. Where Are All the Good Cops? Ferguson Police investigating whether Michael Brown’s stepfather intended to incite a riot. If It Happened There: Courts Sanction Killings by U.S. Security Forces. The real scandal of police violence is what’s legal.

* But body cameras that the cops can freely turn on and off and whose footage they completely control will definitely solve it. You don’t have to take my word for it.

* Hey! My tuition bought you that shotgun. More links under the photo.

* Stories of unseen lives and the effects homelessness in Milwaukee.

* Racial inequality is objectively worse than 30 years ago. And another deBoer instant classic: Tell Stephen Glass I said hey and shut out the lights on your way out.

* On Being a Black Male, Six Feet Four Inches Tall, in America in 2014. Chris Rock vs. the industry.

* Marquette University response to Westboro Baptist Church protest.

* Rolling Stone just wrecked an incredible year of progress for rape victims. What happened at Rolling Stone was not Jackie’s fault. Blame Rolling Stone. The lesson of Rolling Stone and UVA: protecting victims means checking their stories. Reporters are not your friends.

* And just when I was thinking The Newsroom had actually gotten pretty good: Emily Nussbaum on The Newsroom‘s Crazy-Making Campus-Rape Episode. The AC Club: D-.

* Something I’d somehow missed when it was new, but came across in research for a new piece on zombies I’m working on: Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman’s The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home.

* Science fiction after Ferguson: An interview with Walidah Imarisha.

* SF as R&D for the very powerful: U.S. spy agency predicts a very transhuman future by 2030.

* Imagining an open source Star Wars.

* On the lack of cultural estrangement in SF.

* Scenes from the class struggle at Oregon: Admin threatens to deport striking international grad students, just straight-up make-up grades. U Oregon and the Academic Labor System. Megapost at MetaFilter.

* Meanwhile, at Columbia.

* The Democrats’ Education Plan: Class War. Resegregation.

* Cal Refuses to Pay Berkeley Minimum Wage.

* Colleges that pledged to help poor families have been doing the opposite, new figures show.

* An update on the Salaita case from Corey Robin.

* “If students have time to get drunk, colleges aren’t doing their job.” MetaFilter links to the full series at CHE.

* The Equipment 117 Colleges Have Acquired From the Dept. of Defense.

* What I’ve Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings.

* The latest New Inquiry on illness is another stellar issue from a publication that always delivers. This piece on love and schizophrenia is the one making the rounds currently.

* Kerry Puts Brakes on CIA Torture Report. John Kerry’s sad legacy.

* It Takes Nearly $100,000 a Year in Earnings Just to Buy a Crappy House in L.A.

* “Suicide Is My Retirement Plan.”

* Why Poor People Stay Poor.

* Milwaukee after the recession: the jobs are going to the suburbs.

* Social justice as a means to social capital.

* 12 Female Characters Who Keep Shaving Despite Constant Peril.

* The music industry is a horror show, like everything else.

* Remembering Bhopal, the worst industrial disaster in the history of the world.

* We nearly saved the world, but we couldn’t give up our precious academic annual meetings.

* California drought the worst in 1,200 years, new study says. Won’t someone cancel the MLA before it kills again!

* This doesn’t look so bad.

* First ever British sci-fi feature film released. Congratulations, England! Looking forward to your next one.

* 40 Years Ago, Earth Beamed Its First Postcard to the Stars.

* Court Hears Second Case for a Chimpanzee’s Legal Rights.

* Sony has apparently gone to war with North Korea. The future is weird, y’all.

* Someone Made A Map Of Every Rude Place Name In The UK.

* Shimer College: The Best Worst College in America.

* I mock the idea of “the law” around here a lot, but I never for the life of me imagined a scenario where the emergence of a video that shows a man accused of murdering his stepdaughter defiling her corpse could be bad news for the prosecution.

* Breaking news: the rich are different.

* So, for some reason, are the left-handed.

* But it’s not all bad news: The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like.

* “It is no longer true that the divorce rate is rising, or that half of all marriages end in divorce. It has not been for some time.”

* The British Government Wants To Build A Tunnel Under Stonehenge.

* If I’m being perfectly honest I got bored watching the three-minute “What if The Hobbit was one movie?” trailer.

* Scholars, start your syllabi: New novel from Toni Morrison coming in April.

* Wes Anderson’s The Force Awakens. If only!

* And about 100 brains are missing from University of Texas. I’m late posting this, alas; all the easy jokes have already been taken…

Saturday Night Links!

* Chris Ware: The Story of a Penny.

* There’s nothing sweet in life: Daytime Napping Linked to Increased Risk of Death.

* So it’s come to this: the University of California is now arresting striking workers, their leaders and supporters for legally sanctioned labor activity.

* On the gender gap in academia.

* America’s total newsroom workforce dropped 17,000, from 55,000 in 2006 to 38,000 in 2012, according to the Pew Research Journalism Project.

* “D.C.’s homeless children deserve a great play space. Let’s build one.” End homelessness.

* Tasers out of schools, out of everywhere.

* The NSA has exploited Heartbleed bug for years, Bloomberg reports. The NSA denies it.

* EFF seeks student activists for campus network.

* Great moments in arbitrary government nonsense.

Social Security officials say that if children indirectly received assistance from public dollars paid to a parent, the children’s money can be taken, no matter how long ago any overpayment occurred.

* And then, as always, there’s the LAPD.

* Albuquerque police have ‘pattern’ of excessive, deadly force, report says.

* Blogs to watch: http://carceralfeminism.wordpress.com/

* PETA unable to make cannibal Dahmer’s home a vegan restaurant.

* Science is amazing.

* “May I play devil’s advocate?”

* Go on….

* Special bonus Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal!

* The Second Colbert Decade.

* Muppet mash-ups.

* Climate Change Drying Out Southwest Now, With Worse To Come For A Third Of The Planet. Extreme Weather Has Driven A Ten-Fold Increase In Power Outages Over The Last Two Decades. If We Don’t Stop Now, We’ll Surpass 2°C Global Warming.

* Jed Whedon explains why Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been so bad all this time.

* Kickstarter of the night: Geek Theater: Anthology of Science Fiction & Fantasy Plays.

* And of course you had me at “Game of Thrones in Space.”

World’s Best Couple

A lot of photos—more than usual—are up from last night’s wedding on Flickr. This can only be explained by the fact that the individuals in question are disturbingly photogenic.

Way to go kids.

ABQ

Off to ABQ for a breakfast burrito. May attend wedding. Be back Monday.

Pictures of Albuquerque

With Durham looking like this:

(though increasingly less so), it seemed like a good time to put up some pictures from Albuquerque. Which I have done—here.

Albuquerque

The pink-eye patrol is off to Albuquerque to spread our disease throughout the American Southwest, so blogging will be noticeably irregular for the rest of the week. While we’re out there, I’ll also be delivering a paper at the PCA conference on science fiction and the environment, which I’ll try and blog something about in the next few days.

Have fun y’all.