Gerry Canavan

the smartest kid on earth

Posts Tagged ‘animals

Ring in the New Year the Gerry Canavan Way with New Year’s Eve Eve Eve Links!

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Written by gerrycanavan

December 29, 2022 at 9:25 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Thanksgiving Links!

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* It’s been a time: Health experts monitor ‘tri-demic’ as respiratory viruses spread around US. Colorado River conditions are worsening quicker than expected. Competition between respiratory viruses may hold off a ‘tripledemic’ this winter. Children’s hospitals call on Biden to declare emergency in response to ‘unprecedented’ RSV surge. How long COVID ruined my life, from crushing fatigue to brain fog. About 37% of small businesses, which between them employ almost half of all Americans working in the private sector, were unable to pay their rent in full in October. Parents are buying fewer baby clothes, a sign of deep financial distress. The world’s baby shortfall is so bad that the labor shortage will last for years, major employment firms predict. Chris Hemsworth ‘Taking Time Off,’ Discovered Genetic Predisposition for Alzheimer’s Disease: ‘I’m Going to Just Simplify.’ Et tu, Coca-Cola? Massive flock of sheep has been walking in a circle for 12 days straight in China. The Problem With Letting Therapy-Speak Invade Everything. Inside the violent, misogynistic world of TikTok’s new star, Andrew Tate. A Quarter of Americans at Risk of Winter Power Blackouts, Grid Emergencies. Stock up on bottled water and canned food, official tells Germans. What if We Cancel the Apocalypse? this comic is almost 14 years old and could have been made yesterday

* I’m giving the last “Tolkien Tuesdays” talk at the Haggerty on next Tuesday, November 28, on Tolkien and pop culture.

* A truly obscene trend in higher ed: How Colleges and Sports-Betting Companies ‘Caesarized’ Campus Life.

* ‘A Culture of Disposability’: New School Part-Time Faculty Go On Strike. Never Cross a Picket Line: A Primer for Solidarity in the Academic Workplace. The Academic Wheel of Privilege. The Cruelty of Faculty Churn. The Deadline Dilemma. The gutting of the liberal arts continues.

* Vulture had a nice Octavia Butler cluster this week: The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler. Misreading Octavia Butler. How to Write Like Octavia E. Butler. The Butler Journal Entry I Always Return To. This one at the Times was beautiful, too, in more ways than one: The Visions of Octavia Butler. And just a few weeks away: ‘Kindred’ Trailer: Octavia Butler’s Time Travel Novel Comes to Terrifying Life.

* The new Science Fiction Film and Television is out, with articles on steampunk, cryonics, domestic violence in Tau and Upstream Color, and Marvel’s Agent Carter. I can’t tell for sure, but from where I am access to all issues of SFFTV is free right now. And so is the fall issue of SFRA Review! And Uneven Futures is almost here!

* Marxist Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reading Guide.

* One of last year’s student papers is already out in Games and Culture: “Go. Just take him.”: PTSD and the Player-Character Relationship in The Last of Us Part II.

* Marvel got trolled into losing one of its best assets to DC permanently. You hate to see it.

* I Don’t Worry About My Oeuvre: A Conversation with John Carpenter.

* I want Picardo back as the Doctor and I don’t really care how they do it. Just don’t let the Picard showrunners anywhere near it and we’re good to go.

* Online Speed Chess as Self-Soothing, Tetris, or Collaborative Troll Art.

* Middle schoolers tackle climate change in a new alternate reality game.

* The Dirt on Pig-Pen.

* The Incredibly Stupid Catastrophe Caused by Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. Tumblr Blog Linked to Ex-Alameda CEO Explored Race Science, ‘Imperial Chinese Harem’ Polyamory. Queen Caroline. Every Shady Thing Sam Bankman-Fried Has Confessed or Pseudo-Confessed to Since FTX Collapsed. Effective altruism gave rise to Sam Bankman-Fried. Now it’s facing a moral reckoning. Crypto Bro Sam Bankman-Fried Was the Perfect Liberal Hero. Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself.

* Larry David, Tom Brady, Stephen Curry, Other Celebs Sued Over FTX Crypto Exchange Collapse. Larry David was telling you not to buy, you just didn’t listen…

* Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take ‘control of human evolution.’ Jeff Bezos pledges to donate majority of his $124 billion fortune to fight climate change and unify humanity.

* In the end, Yuji Naka, creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, just couldn’t run fast enough.

* Are Trees Talking Underground? For Scientists, It’s in Dispute.

* If you’re keeping score, a guy made a homemade shotgun out of plumbing parts and iced a former PM with it in broad daylight and the Japanese govt is giving him everything he demanded because they realize he had a point. Utterly wild story.

* Federal judge strikes down Biden student debt relief program. What Went Wrong With Biden’s Student Loan Cancellation Plan— And How He Can Make It Right. Joe Biden Is Finally Moving Toward Allowing Bankruptcy to Eliminate Student Debt. Biden Administration Caves To Pressure On Student Debt Bankruptcy.

* ‘A World Cup Built on Modern Slavery’: Stadium Workers Blow the Whistle on Qatar’s ‘Coverup’ of Migrant Deaths and Suffering.

* Thousands were released from prison during covid. The results are shocking.

* The Bike Thieves of Burlington, Vermont.

* Abortion, Every Day.

* New Rules for a New Game.

* Welcome to the Infinite Conversation: an AI generated, never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek.

* ‘I was ecstatic to be given the opportunity to be there’: Milwaukee student’s poetry takes her to the White House.

* Elsewhere on the Milwaukee beat: The Landlord & the Tenant.

* The Race to Save Fanfiction History Before It’s Lost Forever.

* what is the crime for which the turkey was sentenced to death & the sentence nullified by the US President? & what guarantee do we have that the turkey won’t be executed anyway, as soon as the cameras are gone.

* It’s that time of year. How to avoid gender bias when writing recommendation letters.

* How ‘Andor’ Drew from… Joseph Stalin? I Can’t Fucking Believe How Good ‘Andor’ Is.

* Multiculturalism in Middle-earth: On Amazon’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.”

* Yes, but: the comic.

* ‘Doing Nothing’ course helps students build skills to unplug, think deeply.

* Indy’s going to the Moon folks.

* ‘How Did This Man Think He Had the Right to Adopt This Baby?’

* Words Added to the Scrabble Dictionary.

* Might not make my traditional Thanksgiving post this year, so here it is a few days early.

* From the archives: “Utopia, LOL?”

* And in honor of the end of Twitter: one last Twitter roundup.

Written by gerrycanavan

November 22, 2022 at 11:35 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Fall Break Links? In This Economy?

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I’ve been very busy! It might not get better anytime soon! But at least I’ve closed all my tabs...

Baldwin: The defunding of public education has accelerated all the public universities’ forays into the realm of what they call “becoming entrepreneurial,” which I described above—land grabs, leveraging tax-free real estate, public-private partnerships, capturing intellectual property, and more. This story has to begin with the Higher Education Act of 1965. That legislation failed to directly fund higher education and instead offered indirect funding in the form of “student assistance” for tuition—a few grants but mostly loans, most of them private. Only through tuition, paid by most students through loans and debt, could institutions receive federal funds. This prompted a drive toward skyrocketing tuitions, the competition for higher-paying out-of-state and international students, and the debt financing of amenities to draw those students, which has created the massive national student-debt crisis. But even more, this strategy of raising tuition, funded through debt, wasn’t enough to offset decreases in public spending. So, at the same time, colleges and universities ramped up their participation in revenue-generating, community-destroying practices.

Written by gerrycanavan

October 24, 2022 at 9:00 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Monday Morning Links!

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Thursday Night Links!

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Drastic as the decision may seem, particularly given that Pokémon cards aren’t the only things people wait in line for hours to buy, it comes days following a fight in a Brookfield, Wisconsin Target’s parking lot in which four people attacked a man, who then pulled his legally-owned gun on his assailants, prompting them to flee before later being arrested by the police. Target’s decision also comes just weeks after the company implemented new policies to curtail people camping out overnight at their stores. Beyond telling people not to line up like this, an alleged note to employees asked them to consider calling the police in order to force people to disperse.

Ceremonial End of the Semester Tab Purge and Semi-Annual Apology for Being So Busy

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Between my research, service obligations, Zoom teaching, the kids’ virtual schooling, and getting a new puppy, I’ve been just incredibly busy. Another man might say: hey, this is the perfect opportunity to let the blog you’ve been updating continuously since 2004 die! But I am no ordinary man...

First, just a few things I’ve been doing:

And a carefully curated, deliberately and self-consciously incomplete list of some things I’ve been reading this spring:

Written by gerrycanavan

May 11, 2021 at 1:41 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet, Look at what I put on the Internet

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Just Some Normal Friday Night Links on a Perfectly Normal Friday Night

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Thursday Morning Links!

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* Hey, this is finally out! Imagining Apocalypse Now with Mark Soderstrom & Gerry Canavan.

* And the BBC has re-released its Afterwords: Octavia E. Butler series, but it’s still not available to listen to in the US.

* Presenting The Ancillary Review of Books.

* CFP: Journal of Science Fiction Special Issue on Middle Eastern Science Fiction.

Come Unstuck in Time with Ryan North & “Slaughterhouse Five.” Everything about the new Slaughterhouse-Five graphic novel is beautiful, and nothing hurt.

* Wildfires Bring New Devastation Across the West. 500,000 people in Oregon forced to flee wildfires. 7 People Die in West Coast Wildfires. California blaze caused by firework at gender-reveal party. Your phone wasn’t built for the apocalypse. Nothing to see here, folks. I Need You to Care That Our Country Is on Fire. Think 2020′s disasters are wild? Experts see worse in future. Nature sends us a wake-up call. When the Sky Is Orange. It’s Ecosocialism or Barbarism. The coming climate migration.

* Torrential rain triggers widespread flooding in D.C. area, inundating roads, stranding motorists. Floods Washed Away More Than 25% of Nigeria’s Rice Harvest. Animal populations worldwide have declined nearly 70% in just 50 years, new report says. Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse. How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled. 10 Years Ago, World Leaders Set Biodiversity Goals. They Haven’t Met a Single One.

* The end of the university. House of cards: can the American university be saved? The Necroliberal University. Strike at Michigan. “We are striking as an act of community care.” What a strike is for. Graduate employees reach deal with University of Michigan to end strike. As Colleges Open During a Pandemic, Student Life Remains Closed. How Colleges Became the New Covid Hot Spots. Tracking Covid at U.S. Colleges and Universities. Marquette University orders all students at Schroeder Hall to quarantine for 2 weeks. Some students heading home, after Marquette University enforces Schroeder Hall quarantine. Some Marquette students are leaving campus after being ordered to quarantine, while those stuck in their rooms wonder: ‘Is this hell?’ Marquette students scramble to quarantine, grad workers union blames university. Marquette University leaders draft checklist to prepare for possible online transition. No Wifi, No AC: Inside the Chaos of 1,400 COVID Cases at One College. Twenty-three Greek houses at Michigan State University were ordered by the county to quarantine for two weeks. Notre Dame and Michigan State Shifting Online as Campus Outbreaks Grow. UA official says ‘nothing wrong’ with school’s COVID-19 measures. UW students describe chaos as COVID-19 raged through residence halls, leading to lockdown. College Football Player Dies at 20. Shaming and blaming students can make it worse, experts say. Nice work if you can get it. What if Everyone on Campus Understood the Money? Class Of COVID-19: The Horrifying Sadness Of Sending My Kids To College During A Pandemic. Low-income students are dropping out of college this fall in alarming numbers.

Blackademic Lives Matter: An Interview with Lavelle Porter.

* The Rules of the Game: How the U.S. News rankings helped reshape one state’s public colleges.

* What could go wrong in formalizing relationships between a multi-billion dollar industry where fortunes change hands in seconds, and a multi-billion dollar enterprise where the actual workers are paid nothing and could lose their entire futures in a single play

America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral. The Pandemic Is an Intuition Nightmare. The Pandemic Is a ‘Mental Health Crisis’ for Parents. The Crushing Reality of Zoom School. US daily death toll from COVID-19 shoots back up over 1,000. New Cases Have Reached Record Levels in the Midwest. What Young, Healthy People Have to Fear from COVID-19. How the Coronavirus Attacks the Brain. Obesity and the coronavirus. Maine wedding ‘superspreader’ event is now linked to seven deaths. None of those people attended. Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Is Now Linked to More Than 250,000 Coronavirus Cases. Signs of depression have tripled in the U.S. since the COVID-19 pandemic got underway. A Dentist Sees More Cracked Teeth. What’s Going On? Stop Expecting Life to Go Back to Normal Next Year.

* The stock market is now so decoupled from the real economy that no one can see the economy is in absolute freefall. A pandemic, a motel without power and a potentially terrifying glimpse of Orlando’s future. Two kids, no support system and $167 in unemployment benefits: One single mom’s plight in the age of Covid-19. 1 in 5 American workers has filed for unemployment benefits since mid-March. Half of out-of-work Americans were unable to cover basic expenses in August. The Unemployed States of America. Why the real unemployment rate is likely over 11%. 52% of young adults in the US are living with their parents. That’s the highest share since the Great Depression. Billionaires won corona. ‘We were shocked’: RAND study uncovers massive income shift to the top 1%.

* Baltimore schools estimate only 65% of students are logging on every day. Children with disabilities are falling behind in school. School in the Time of Coronavirus.

* Darko Suvin: Thoughts within the Coronising siege: a work in progress.

* Some real Ministry of Truth shit at DOJ and HHS.

‘Like an Experimental Concentration Camp’: Whistleblower Complaint Alleges Mass Hysterectomies at ICE Detention Center. Exclusive: Georgia doctor who forcibly sterilized detained women has been identified.

* Cancel culture strikes again: National U Holds Off on Name Change to Honor Donor Investigated for Child Porn.

* The pandemic and UBI.

Benford’s Law and COVID-19 reporting.

* Sometimes you just know.

* As a delusion, “transgender Black Marxists are seeking the overthrow of the United States” is almost charmingly retro. How Conspiracy Theories Are Shaping the 2020 Election—and Shaking the Foundation of American Democracy. QAnon is a Nazi Cult, Rebranded. QAnon Incited Her to Kidnap Her Son and Then Hid Her From the Law. No, The Government Did Not Break Up A Child Sex Trafficking Ring In Georgia. Trump lands likely endorsement. What If Trump Loses and Won’t Leave? Barr Tells Prosecutors to Consider Charging Violent Protesters With Sedition. Bill Barr Pushes ‘Wild’ and ‘Fanciful’ Felonious Postman Hypothetical. Don’t miss what Kayleigh McEnany just said about election night. I don’t think they should have told Trump about the heat ray.

* The Whitelash Next Time.

* What happened in Georgia was a crime. Rick Perry’s Ukrainian Dream. Louis DeJoy’s rise as GOP fundraiser was powered by contributions from company workers who were later reimbursed, former employees say. Another story that would have been a major scandal a few years ago and is now just seen as perfectly ordinary politics.

https://twitter.com/PatBlanchfield/status/1305894015062216705

* What’s the big deal? He’s not like he’s gonna lose Michigan.

* “I Have Blood on My Hands”: A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation. Facebook is allowing a campaign to ditch face masks en masse to spread.

* Man obsessed with drinking the blood of the young to stay healthy turns out to have some questionable political beliefs.

* The Senate is bad, yes, but we could always make it worse.

* At least 37 million people have been displaced as a direct result of the wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, according to a new report from Brown University’s Costs of War project. That figure exceeds those displaced by conflict since 1900, the authors say, with the exception of World War II.

* New York’s homeless students.

Why Screen Time Can Actually Be Good for Your Kids.

12-year-old suspended in Colorado over toy gun seen in virtual class.

* Dozens of Black former franchisees sue McDonald’s over alleged discrimination.

* Unions threaten work stoppages amid calls for racial justice. White House directs federal agencies to cancel race-related training sessions it calls ‘un-American propaganda.’

* Parents vs the childless! Whoever wins, the bosses win a whole lot more!

* Serial killer at Ft. Hood? It’s up over 23 deaths. What on Earth is happening there?

The OAS Accusation of Electoral Fraud Against Evo Morales Is Bullshit — And Now We Have the Data to Prove It.

* When does a model own her own image?

* Dune as anti-white-savior narrative.

* Civil War generals as Muppets: a definitive thread.

* “Safety driver” as “moral crumple zone.”

* Imagine the absolute blessing of waking up one morning to find that someone who treated you this way was trending on Twitter.

* J.K. Rowling’s new book imagines a fantasy world where she is right about trans people.

David Graeber, 1961–2020. A Jewish Goodbye to David Graeber. Remembering My Friend, David Graeber. That Was David Graeber.

* capitalism.jpg

* Semenya loses at Swiss supreme court over testosterone rules.

John Cage musical work changes chord for first time in seven years.

* Movies were great. I’m sad about movies.

* For a topic about which American society seems to have a conversation quite frequently (particularly when celebrities are involved), “depression” is bewildering territory. Where does it come from, and why would evolution preserve something so disabling and agonizing as a feature of the species? Can it be driven off? What kind of documentation of it can be made? Is it possible to narrate and interpret, or does it defeat exegesis? What do you say to someone in its grip? In his new book, How To Be Depressed, the renowned journalist and critic George Scialabba observes that “[t]he pain of a severe clinical depression is the worst thing in the world.” This, it turns out, is both pretty much all you can ever say about the topic and a door opening onto the vast field of what we might call depression humanism.

* We stan.

Time Travel as White Privilege.

* Life on Venus? Astronomers See a Signal in Its Clouds.

The Entire Universe Might Be a Neural Network.

* Are aliens hiding in plain sight?

* Eugenics, sperm donation, and the law.

* Rules & Roberts.

* Of course you had me at a Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Switch game.

* And I volunteer.

Written by gerrycanavan

September 17, 2020 at 9:00 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Friday Links!

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* My Octavia Butler book is free all this month from University of Illinois Press. Their new Kim Stanley Robinson book is also very good.

* Africanfuturism Defined.

* J.R.R. Tolkien crowds drive Paris staff to go on strike. Marquette helped make it happen.

Jeannette Ng Was Right: John W. Campbell Was a Fascist.

* Promissory futures.

* I’ve been deep in edits for SFFTV’s special issue on Blade Runner and its legacy, so of course I had to check out this oral history of its Los Angeles.

* Amy Rose grew up loving Star Trek in a way no one else did… she thought it was real.

* Not all heroes wear pantaloons: Usher Who Keeps Colossal ‘Hamilton’ Bathroom Line Moving Becomes Viral Star.

* My Friend, Mr. Rogers.

Halloween and Stranger Danger.

 

* Let’s transform the city with scooters! *five seconds later* oh right

* 😬😬😬😬😬.

* Hate crime horror in Milwaukee. Hate in the Trump era.

* We’re really just going to sit around and pretend they’re not going to do this in three states in November 2020, I guess?

Stivers said he thought Bevin’s speech declining to concede to Beshear was “appropriate.” He said believes most of the votes that went to Libertarian John Hicks, who received about 2% of the total vote, would have gone to Bevin and made him the clear winner.

This is sub-“illegal immigrants stole the vote in California” bullshit and there’s no guarantee it won’t work.

* Bernie finds religion on immigration.

* The metapolitics of Medicare-for-all.

* Having exhausted all other options for profit, a health insurance company tries actually giving people the care they need. How One Employer Stuck a New Mom With a $898,984 Bill for Her Premature Baby.

* “OK Boomer”: not okay?

* OK Adorno.

* Lean in, white supremacist ladies!

* First I’m hearing of it, but it sounds bad: Scientists Declare A Climate Emergency, Warn Of ‘Untold Human Suffering.’

Robust evidence of declines in insect abundance and biodiversity. Forged in Fire: California’s Lessons for a Green New Deal. California is experiencing an almost existential crisis. Has the climate crisis made California too dangerous to live in? What It Means to Evacuate. California Is Burning—Nationalize PG&E. Blood Gold in the Brazilian Rain Forest. The world is stuck with decades of new plastic it can’t recycle. How The Affair Turned to Climate Change and Science Fiction in Its Final Season.  Reflections on the Green New Deal. The Oregon Trail for a new — oh no. Lessons in survival.

“Really cheap powerful computing is great,” Goodman said, “but it also allows us to be racist faster and more efficiently than ever before.”

* Stanford still trying to murder Stanford University Press.

* Behind the scenes at Disney U.

* Harvard Just Discovered that PowerPoint is Worse Than Useless. I could have told you that!

* Of course they kept this one behind the paywall: Can You Get Students Interested in the Humanities Again? These Colleges May Have It Figured Out.

How Applying to Grad School Becomes a Display of Trauma for People of Color.

* Redlining the humanities.

* The Williams English Boycott.

* Key elements of the campus panic narrative are drawn not just from unrepresentative anecdotes but from stories that are basically fake.

* Just the pettiest shit. It’s incredible.

* Clinton! Bloomberg! All your favorites!

We Don’t Need Longer School Days, We Need a Shorter Work Week.

* The culture of policing is deeply sick.

Privacy experts say a warrant granted in Florida could set a precedent, opening up all consumer DNA sites to law enforcement agencies across the country.

* The only election result I need.

The U.S. Only Pretends to Have Free Markets. The Tyranny of Economists. Liberalism according to The Economist. Neoliberalism? Never Heard of It.

* Could it be that Amazon … is bad?

‘It’s Time To Break Up Disney,’ Says Author Of New Book On Monopoly Power In America.

* Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain.

* All you people who are telling me this show is good are messing with me, right.

* Terminal whiteness.

* Funny, I have the exact opposite problem.

* With a Laser, Researchers Say They Can Hack Alexa, Google Home or Siri. New York Times writer is shocked to see how much a social trust scoring system knows about her. Grand Theft Auto maker hasn’t paid corporation tax in 10 years. I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb. In an often barren media landscape, Deadspin was an oasis of editorial independence and irreverence. So its ultra-rich owners killed it. Adam Neumann and the Art of Failing Up. Uber’s first homicide (that we know of). Screen time might be physically changing kids’ brains.

* Friends? I’ll give you friends!

* Scenes from the class struggle in America.

The Company That Branded Your Millennial Life Is Pivoting To Burnout.

* Ady Barkan Is Running Out of Time to Speak: As his ALS intensifies, the prominent single-payer activist is finding new ways to influence the politics of health care.

* My Year of Concussions.

* When the company that made your prosthetic feet won’t repair them.

* Don’t break up without reading this! A ton of people received text messages overnight that were originally sent on Valentine’s Day.

* When child abuse is a personal branding strategy.

McDonald’s apologises for ‘Sundae Bloody Sundae’ promotion.

* RIP, Hollywood Superman.

* I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s a huge unforced error to try to replicate “Let It Go.”

* Animals and sports! Now I like sports.

If Birds Left Tracks in the Sky, They’d Look Like This.

* I can never resist brutalist ruins.

* Watch how the 11foot8 bridge is being raised by 8 inches.

* Hey Satan. Burying some fossils again?

Buckle up, motherpastas, because I’m gonna blow the lid off the tin of lies that is SpaghettiO’s.

* Some things are forbidden for a reason.

* And if we’re still alive then, we’ll be seeing Into the Spider-Verse 2 in April 2020.

Jul 24, 2019; Salt Lake City, UT, USA; A cat disrupts play in the second half between Tigres UANL and the Real Salt Lake during their Leagues Cup game at Rio Tinto Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Swinger-USA TODAY Sports TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY – 13095176

Written by gerrycanavan

November 8, 2019 at 10:23 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Friday Links!

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* CFP: A special issue of Science Fiction Film and Television on gaming.

* Happening today at Duke: Whose Crisis? Whose University? Abolitionist Study in and beyond Global Higher Education.

* You’ve heard of the gig economy, but what about the gig academy?

* While an economic downturn is on the horizon, this is happening *before* the recession has begun.

* One small victory: Update: UC Irvine Grants Lecturer Paid Leave.

* Drunk with power in Wisconsin: State Assembly Approves Gubernatorial Veto Change.

The 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prizes in Literature go to Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke. 1 out of 2 ain’t bad…

* Next year, Greta!

* Phillip Pullman: Philip Pullman on Children’s Literature and the Critics Who Disdain It.

Since the 2016 election, the American press has fixated on rural communities and created a dubious new genre: the Trump Country Safari.

* The moment of constitutional crisis always approaches but never arrives. This is the constitutional crisis we feared. The Final Demise of “Adults in the Room.” Two Giuliani Associates Who Helped Him on Ukraine Charged With Campaign-Finance Violations. Alas, Rudy!

Joe Biden’s Family Has Been Cashing in on His Career for Decades. Democrats Need to Acknowledge That.

Joe Biden’s Case for the Presidency Is Collapsing. Elizabeth Warren is now leading the 2020 polls.

* What if the world treated the U.S. like a rogue state?

How a Jim Crow law still shapes Mississippi’s elections.

* The nightmare of class society is that it turns even the most generous human impulse — to find something common across difference — into a machine for reproducing hierarchy and injustice. Ruling Class Superfriends.

* The Radical Guidebook Embraced by Google Workers and Uber Drivers.

The Making of the American Gulag.

10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki.

* The Day Our Galaxy Exploded.

* News from the Anthropocene: Massive power shut-off to hit 800,000 customers, could extend nearly a week. PG&E diverted safety money for profit, bonuses. PG&E power shut-offs leave ill and disabled struggling. Power Shutoffs Can’t Save California From Wildfire Hell. Fire breaks out anyway.

Lonely, burned out, and depressed: The state of millennials’ mental health in 2019.

* Today in the nightmare society.

How Antarctica is melting from above and below. Tornado Alley has moved 500 miles east in the last few decades. Temperatures in Denver dropped 64 degrees in less than 24 hours, setting a record.

Beware the climate pragmatists.

Google’s core business is misinforming people, but sometimes they do it on a pro bono basis.

A lost decade and $200,000: one dad’s crusade to save his daughters from addiction.

* Understanding the professional-managerial class.

* A reporter went undercover as a Facebook moderator and was trained not to delete certain racist memes and images of child abuse.

Historian Gavriel D. Rosenfeld’s new book, The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present, presents the actual history of one of those possible branches. It traces the development of the idea of the Fourth Reich—a resurgent, Nazi-like regime based in apocalyptic visions and quasi-religious ethnonationalism. Though the Fourth Reich never actually took power in Germany or elsewhere, Rosenfeld shows how the idea itself has been influential. His account helps us to understand why the Fourth Reich never came to fruition—and what we can do to make sure it remains a counterfactual.

* From the archives: Tribal Map of America Shows Whose Land You’re Actually Living On.

Research finds uranium in Navajo women, babies.

Study: a nuclear war between India and Pakistan could lead to a mini-nuclear winter.

* Fairly certain that crude oil is a genuine eldritch horror.

* A tale of two Arthurs. Why We Shouldn’t Fear Joker.

* The Real Threat of ‘Joker’ Is Hiding in Plain Sight: What the film wants to say — about mental illness or class divisions in society — is not as interesting as what it accidentally says about whiteness.

Rewatching Taxi Driver in the Age of Joker.

* So I do know what it’s like to be a bat.

Monday Night Links!

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* A good start! Grinnell Forfeits Football Season.

* Boomers, man.

* This photo of a Bengal Tiger is composed of only 2500 pixels. That’s the number of Bengal Tigers that are still alive.

We need to start talking about seemingly drastic approaches to the climate crisis, such as sun-dimming aerosols, right now — or we risk losing democratic control of the process. It’s Time to Talk About Solar Geoengineering.

Police have taken pre-emptive action against environmental protesters who are planning to cause disruption in Westminster.

I study collapsed civilizations. Here’s my advice for a climate change apocalypse.

I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle.

Bad ancestors: does the climate crisis violate the rights of those yet to be born?

* Big tech is a black box.

* US to step aside for Turkish assault on Kurds in Syria. Top Military Officers Unload on Trump. Sounds like my man is on the brink of self-impeaching. Trump at serious risk of losing the mandate of heaven. Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman: Trump wrong to seek help from Ukraine, China. ‘Out on a limb’: Inside the Republican reckoning over Trump’s possible impeachment. Trump allies sought Ukraine gas deal. Trump’s Not Richard Nixon. He’s Andrew Johnson. Nine scenarios.

Last Week, Warren May Have Won The Democratic Race.

Political Operatives Are Faking Voter Outrage With Millions Of Made-Up Comments To Benefit The Rich And Powerful.

* Bronx Prosecutors Release Secret Records On Dishonest Cops.

Slain witness Joshua Brown was expected to testify in lawsuit against Dallas police.

* How the Prison Economy Works.

* Sacramento Amazon Workers Are Protesting after Woman Was Allegedly Fired for Spending Extra Hour with Dying Mother-in-Law.

Journalist says a CBP officer withheld his passport until he agreed he writes ‘propaganda.’

Robots to Cut 200,000 U.S. Bank Jobs in Next Decade, Study Says.

* America is a failed state.

* For real though.

* Finally, some good news.

* I like this.

24 Reasons “Angel” Was Perfect, and one pretty big reason why it wasn’t.

Joker and the vacuity of influence. Joker and white male resentment. (I liked what Noah Berlatsky had to say on this subject, too; I thought a lot about it while I was watching.) Joker Is a Viewing Experience of Rare, Numbing Emptiness. ‘The Greater Danger to Society May Be If You Don’t See This Movie.’ My own meager contribution to The Discourse: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

* I think I linked this once before, but I saw it on Twitter and wanted to link again: Ida Yoshinaga’s Disney’s Moana, the Colonial Screenplay, and Indigenous Labor Extraction in Hollywood Fantasy Films.

* This tweet got inside my fucking head.

In an effort to deter other gymnasts from trying skills they are not physically capable of doing, the International Gymnastics Federation watered down the value of a new element Biles plans to do at the world championships. That’s right. Penalize the reigning world and Olympic champion, who is almost cautious when it comes to adding difficulty, for the potential recklessness of others.

* They say America’s best days are behind it, but Someone Beat Minecraft Without Mining Any Blocks.

* Of course you had me at hi-rez, open-licensed recreation of the 1968 Disneyland souvenir map.

* Ours is a fallen world.

* But at least Rick and Morty‘s coming back. Everything’s coming up Canavan!

Monday Night Links!

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* Navajos on Mars: Native Sci-fi Film Futures.

* They’re renaming the Tiptree Award after all. From Julie Phillips: On Tiptree and naming.

* The Tragedy of GJ237b: A Role-Playing Game for No Players.

* Happy 82nd Birthday to The Hobbit. And from the archives, in celebration: The Most Metal Deaths in Middle-earth, Ranked.

Students protest climate change, MU demonstration policy.

* Essay mills are using TurnItIn to prove they’re selling original content.

* Terrible, if inevitable: Grad Students at Private Colleges Could Lose the Right to Unionize.

* Got Shakespeare? What about Milton on Shakespeare?

* The university in ruins in Buffalo.

Humanities ‘risk becoming cherry on top’ of other disciplines.

* “University of Wisconsin Madison, which announced last year it would open joint research campus with Foxconn in 2020, is well behind its original promise.”

* The Problem with Sugar-Daddy Science.

* Today in actual threats to free speech: U.S. Orders Duke and U.N.C. to Recast Tone in Mideast Studies.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on campus criticism of Israel is Orwellian.

* New Mexico Announces Plan for Free College for State Residents.

* Johns Hopkins Ends ICE Contracts.

* Long-hidden documents reveal the University of Texas’s blueprint for slowing integration during the civil rights era.

* Can’t believe MOOCs didn’t work.

* Don’t teach, strike!

* Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard.

* Is Meritocracy Hurting Higher Education?

* Academia’s Holy Warriors: How a network of Catholic intellectuals is making the case against liberalism.

To Protect Your Faculty from Right-Wing Attacks, Follow the Money.

* US academic given two weeks to leave UK after eight years.

Thoughts on the planetary: An interview with Achille Mbembe.

80 Years Ago, a Football Powerhouse Ditched the Sport as a ‘Crass’ Distraction. Why Haven’t More Colleges Followed Suit?

* A new issue of Analog Game Studies is up.

* #NotMyAriel.

* On Dark Matter and White Empiricism.

* CFP: UW Women and Gender Studies Consortium Call for Proposals: Resistance and Reimagination. CFP: U Chicago Grad Student Symposium: Race and Capitalism Defined.

* Actually, Gender-Neutral Pronouns Can Change a Culture.

A Brief History of Trans Philosophy.

* Dear Disgruntled White Plantation Visitors.

* We Didn’t Stand a Chance Against Opioids.

* Most American teens are frightened by climate change, poll finds, and about 1 in 4 are taking action. It’s right to be scared, says top UK scientist. Climate change is morally wrong. It is time for a carbon abolition movement. Millions Of Young People Around The World Are Leading Strikes To Call Attention To The Climate Crisis. ‘We will make them hear us.’ Best Protest Signs From the Global Youth Walkouts. How to be Young in a Climate Emergency. I have a dream that the powerful take the climate crisis seriously. The time for their fairytales is over. ‘You’re not trying hard enough. Sorry.’ This is all wrong. Why Greta is Good.

* Only a Green New Deal can douse the fires of eco-fascism.

Hello From the Year 2050. We Avoided the Worst of Climate Change — But Everything Is Different.

* It’s Kids vs. the World in a Landmark New Climate Lawsuit.

* Does Science Fiction Have a Moral Imperative to Address Climate Change?

To decarbonize we must decomputerize: why we need a Luddite revolution.

* Money Is the Oxygen on Which the Fire of Global Warming Burns.

* Elsewhere in headlines from the Anthropocene: SF’s Treasure Island, poised for building boom, escaped listing as Superfund site.

Faster Than We Thought: What Stories Will Survive Climate Change?

* ‘Worse Than Anyone Expected’: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions. Only 8 People in This Indigenous Tribe Still Speak Their Native Language. The Amazon Fires May Wipe It Out Completely. North America Has Lost a Quarter of Its Birds in Fifty Years. ‘Opening the Door to Hell Itself’: Bahamas Confronts Life After Hurricane Dorian. ‘This situation brings me to despair’: two reef scientists share their climate grief. Exposing The Myth Of Plastic Recycling: Why A Majority Is Burned Or Thrown In A Landfill. America’s Nuclear Power Plants Were Not Built for Climate Change. America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys. 9 Oldest Trees in Africa, Some Over 2,000-Years-Old, Now Dead. The Capitalocene.

 

* That’ll solve it: Following the lead of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a former 2020 contender, many candidates have set a target date for, at minimum, requiring all new passenger vehicles be zero-emission: Sen. Kamala Harris of California and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg put it at 2035, for example, while Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts aim for 2030.

* Simpsons did it.

* “How did the Army exceed its recruiting goals this year? It was the student loan crisis, not the wars, service leaders say.”

The Student Debt Problem Is a Family Crisis.

The Electoral College Really Does Give Republicans a Massive Advantage in Close Elections, a New Paper Finds.

The Case Against the Popular Vote.

* More voters are registering than dying — but differences by state could shape 2020.

* Elizabeth Warren’s Crusade Against Corruption.

* I think people are severely underestimating the likelihood that Hunter Biden was involved in Bad Stuff in either Ukraine, or China, or both.

It’s Not Just Millennials — Gen Z Is Dealing With A Lot Of Debt Now Too. Wisconsin remains in the top ten states in the nation for the percentage of graduates with student loan debt.

* Elsewhere in everyone being super broke. Millennials believe they’ll die before they retire. America has two economies—and they’re diverging fast.

* WeWork and the Great Unicorn Delusion.

* How Boeing’s Managerial Revolution Created the 737 Max Disaster.

Sandy Hook parents release chilling ‘back to school’ PSA.

‘Fantasy Island’: How the American Dream fueled Puerto Rico’s decline.

* In 2007, 47 dogs were rescued from an illegal dogfighting ring organized by NFL quarterback Michael Vick. They could have been euthanized. Instead, they became family pets.

* She Quit Her Job. He Got Night Goggles. They Searched 57 Days for Their Dog.

New York Judge Fines Landlord $17,000 for Threatening to Call ICE on Tenant.

But Milwaukee’s 30-year voucher experiment has not yielded results that are clearly better than the public schools.

* King of Kong sequel shaping up nicely.

* This game should be illegal.

* This question about art predicts Trump support better than educational attainment.

There’s a shortage of perfect movies in this world. It would be a pity to damage this one.

* Emma Thompson’s new movie The Lost Girls paints Peter Pan as the villain he’s always been.

* Watching Toy Story 4 I simply assumed this was how the movie would end, and was shocked when it didn’t.

* Saved by the Bell: The New Class: The New Class.

* How Wes Anderson Makes Films.

* We needed the X-Men, and now — thank the mutant gods — they’re back.

Since the 1940s, professional clowns Copyright their faces by painting them on eggs. There’s a Clown Egg Registry in London, England.

* Why do people believe the Earth is flat?

Why don’t we agree on the urgency of climate change? Because of a moneyed conspiracy to make us doubt it. Why did we let a single family amass riches greater than the Rockefellers while peddling OxyContin and claiming it wasn’t addictive? Because of a moneyed conspiracy. Why do some 737s fall out of the sky? Why are our baby-bottles revealed to be lined with carcinogenic plastics? Why do corrupt companies get to profit by consorting with the world’s most despicable dictators? Conspiracies.

In other words: Big Tech doesn’t have a mind-control ray, but it does have an incredibly sophisticated people-finding machine, and if you’re looking for people who might believe in your conspiracy, it helps if there’s a massive pool of people around who’ve been battered (and had their lives irreparably harmed) by conspiracies.

What the Apps That Bring Food to Your Door Mean for Delivery Workers.

China forcefully harvests organs from detainees, tribunal concludes.

* Industrial agriculture and #MeToo.

A 6-Year-Old Girl Was Arrested After Throwing A Tantrum.

* Look at this incredibly over-the-top unveiling for Staples new logo.

* How the Black Turtleneck Came to Represent Creative Genius.

* How pencils are made.

* How TikTok Holds Our Attention.

* How a sneaky asteroid escaped detection.

How we invest in our cities is broken.

We’ve Reached Peak Wellness. Most of It Is Nonsense.

* Why Jeffrey Epstein Loved Evolutionary Psychology.

* Purdue Pharma, Maker of OxyContin, Files for Bankruptcy.

Graffiti That Helps You See Through Walls.

* So, the Navy just admitted the Blink-182 guy leaked actual UFO footage.

A Lunar Space Elevator Is Actually Feasible & Inexpensive, Scientists Find.

The Socialists Who Think Revolution Will Come When the Aliens Get Here.

How a ‘Sesame Street’ Muppet became embroiled in a controversy over autism.

* Artificial Intelligence Confronts a ‘Reproducibility’ Crisis.

MIT Media Lab Kept Regulators in the Dark, Dumped Chemicals in Excess of Legal Limit.

* An Alzheimer’s vaccine?

How an online gag about storming the military base became a real-life drama involving a rural town, the government, and frequent evocations of the Fyre Festival.

* Impossible Burgers Aren’t Healthy, and That’s the Whole Point.

* Meet Shampoodler, the podcast and Twitch superfan who’s the future of fandom in interactive media.

* Frozen II just remains inscrutable to me.

* Aron Eisenberg, the Actor Who Played Nog on Deep Space Nine, Has Died.

* Hey, God, which beings are conscious?

* And I’ve been saying it for years: Scrabble is broken.

Written by gerrycanavan

September 23, 2019 at 3:28 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Wednesday Night Links!

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Readers in a frenzy as Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments released early. Why It Matters That Amazon Shipped Margaret Atwood’s “The Testaments” a Week Early. Look for my review of The Testaments in LARB soon!

* Maybe the aliens are already tired of us.

The coming death of just about every rock legend.

* CFP: Extrapolating Nostalgia: Special issue of Science Fiction Studies.

* The job so nice they posted it twice: Assistant Professor of Fantasy/Science Fiction Literature.

Author Walter Mosley Quits ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ After Using N-Word in Writers Room. Why I Quit the Writers’ Room.

* The real Dickinson scandal appears only at the margins of Wild Nights with Emily, at the start and at the end. The movie begins with a disclaimer: “The poems and letters of Emily Dickinson are used in this film with permission of Harvard University Press.” But why does anyone need permission from Harvard to make a movie about Emily Dickinson? The answer involves theft, adulterous affairs, a land deal gone wrong, a feud between families, two elite colleges, and some of the most famous poems in American literature.

* As of today there are no longer any children who were alive on 9/11. Never forget the worst comics page in history.

* “The grand neoliberal experiment of the past 40 years has demonstrated that markets in fact do not regulate themselves. Managed markets turn out to be more equitable and more efficient. Yet the theory and practical influence of neoliberalism marches splendidly on, because it is so useful to society’s most powerful people—as a scholarly veneer to what would otherwise be a raw power grab.”

* Liberalism can’t defend itself.

* Whose Apollo Program?

* Another world is possible.

* Shock of shocks: Administration Within UW System Grew While Faculty Numbers Declined.

* The great enrollment crash.

* California to force NCAA to pay athletes. More at the MetaFilter thread.

* Ronan Farrow exposes MIT. The Epstein scandal at MIT shows the moral bankruptcy of techno-elites. The Moral Rot of the MIT Media Lab.

Her University Publicly Accused Her of Using Meth. Here’s How It Came to That, and Here’s What Happened Next.

* Another trip inside Cheating, Inc.

* The WSJ takes aim at the English major, again. Some college major data from the Center on Education and the Workforce.

* Hard not to think we’ve grown obsolete.

* Another free speech exception.

* Inside Liberty University.

“We’re not a school; we’re a real estate hedge fund,” said a senior university official with inside knowledge of Liberty’s finances. “We’re not educating; we’re buying real estate every year and taking students’ money to do it.”

Ah, they’ve got nothing on Columbia or NYU.

Elite schools say they’re looking for academic excellence and diversity. But their thirst for tuition revenue means that wealth trumps all.

* I worked at a website that rated professors for political bias. This is what I learned.

* ‘UVA has ruined us’: Health system sues thousands of patients, seizing paychecks and putting liens on homes. “Johns Hopkins deliberately puts poor people who seek its care into medical debt so they lose their homes so Johns Hopkins can buy the land for its expansion.”

Congress Promised Student Borrowers A Break. Education Dept. Rejected 99% Of Them.

Over 60, and Crushed by Student Loan Debt.

The administrators who handle sexual-misconduct investigations aren’t sticking around for long. That’s because they have one of the toughest jobs on campus.

* Inside the cuts at Marquette. Under the circumstances I feel overly relieved that we’ve moved up in the US News rankings.

* When Active-Shooter Drills Scare the Children They Hope to Protect.

* Daughter should have been armed, it’s the only way to prevent these things unfortunately.

* Richest Could Lose Hundreds of Billions Under Warren’s Wealth Tax. They wouldn’t even notice it missing.

UBI Already Exists, We Just Need to Redistribute It.

* Climate change is here. Climate change isn’t an intangible future risk. It’s here now, and it’s killing us. Dangerous new hot zones are spreading around the world. The heat is on. James Cameron says “people need to wake the fuck up” about climate change. Invest $1.8 trillion to adapt. Climate change also means retreat. In an era of climate change, everything feels strange. Even the places we call home. Mississippi Beaches Have Been Vacant For 2 Months As A Toxic Algae Bloom Lurks Offshore. Tired: The Anthropocene. Wired: The Carnivalocene. The novel in the Anthropocene. Winter Isn’t Coming. Prepare for the Pyrocene.

Island of 50,000 People in the Bahamas Is 70% Under Water. Hurricane Dorian Survivors Were Turned Away & That’s A Chilling Look At Our Future.

NOAA staff warned in Sept. 1 directive against contradicting Trump. I knew he’d slip up eventually!

* Hope in the Midst of Ecological Dystopia: Cli-fi books for the young-adult reader.

Agribusiness against the Amazon.

* “When I say state’s rights,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

* From the mixed-up files of the top Republican gerrymanderer.

* Today in the wisdom of markets.

* For every grift, a mark: Meet The Hyperloop’s Truest Believers.

When the State Enforces “Straight Pride.”

What’s Missing From “White Fragility”: Robin DiAngelo’s idea changed how white progressives talk about themselves—and little else.

* And speaking of white fragility.

Indigenous Women in Canada Are Still Being Sterilized Without Their Consent.

TWO MONTHS BEFORE my operation, I dreamed I was a character in a video game. As sometimes happens in video games, I died. When I respawned, I had a new face, the face of another woman altogether. Upon discovering this in the dream, I collapsed into my companion’s arms and told her, through tears, that all I had ever wanted was to become unrecognizable to myself.

* The rise of anti-trans “radical” feminists, explained.

Care Work Is the Next Feminist Frontier.

In Chicago, more than 16,000 students are homeless.

* The Center for American Progress Is a Disgrace.

* Don’t Be Fooled — Kamala Harris’s “Criminal Justice” Plan Is Not Progressive.

* Baby Boomers are charmed by his rose-tinted revisionism. Younger Democrats see the past more clearly. The Historical Amnesia of Joe Biden’s Candidacy.

* Joe Biden can’t stop lying. He lies for popularity, he lies to protect billionaires’ profits, and he lies to cover his own misdeeds. If he were to quit lying, Biden would be exposed for who he actually is: a happy stooge of industry trying to squash the rising demand for a better world.

* Imagine if we had a democracy.

* Trump’s already cancelling elections.

* Corey Robin on Clarence Thomas’s theory of race.

* The case for changing the voting age to zero.

The Fall of the Meritocracy.

Yes, GamerGate Was a Misogynist Hate Campaign.

* Rethinking cities, from the ground up. Cars are pushing out bikes and pedestrians to the applause of the influential and powerful.

* Ex-lawyer who stole from clients in part to finance his ‘Excuseman’ character given 3 years in prison.

* sometimes I just get overwhelmed by how regular and normal our country is

* extremely normal very normal

Document reveals the FBI is tracking border protest groups as extremist organizations. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has accidentally revealed the whereabouts of a future “urban warfare” training facility that is expected to include “hyper-realistic” simulations of homes, hotels and commercial buildings in Chicago and Arizona. The Capricious Use of Solitary Confinement Against Detained Immigrants.

Made In America: For $9.50 An Hour, They Brew Tear Gas For Hong Kong.

* California Bill Makes App-Based Companies Treat Workers as Employees. UPDATE: Uber already refusing to comply.

* Republicans Republicaning, part 7998.

How We Shut Down the Nation’s Largest Child Detention Center.

* The US military may have spent millions to help prop up a Trump resort. Gee, I hope someone was fired over that blunder!

* TSA PreCheck: It absolutely shouldn’t exist, and is absolutely an incredible value.

* Frenchest news item of all time: man dies having “adulterous relationship with a perfect stranger” on business trip; court rules it was a work accident.

* The struggle to save Day-Glo.

* Whatever happened to Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Familiar?

* The original Civilization, running inside an Excel spreadsheet.

* A history of Tetris randomizers.

* How we became nostalgic for Minecraft.

* 44 African Architectural Styles.

* Where there were more than 2,000 staff cartoonists at work a century ago, and 180 as recently as the 1980s, contemporary estimates are grim: a 2011 survey by The Herb Block Foundation, an educational nonprofit, estimated that fewer than 40 such jobs still exist.

* Harry Potter Fandom in an Illiberal Democracy.

Woman Shares 18th Century Student Disciplinary Records In Response To ‘Millennials Are The Worst’ Claim.

* A people’s history of labor history.

* They solved the Geedis mystery.

The Lost Issue of Grant Morrison and Chas Truog’s Animal Man From 1988 – “Dominion.”

* Maid of honor shows up to wedding in T. rex costume after being told she could wear anything.

* Cheese can’t fake the funk.

* Every culture tells a different story about why it cages animals, which nearly all of them do. The stories evolve, and the cages do too.

Marc Davis in His Own Words: Imagineering the Disney Theme Parks.

Occupations by frequency as mentioned in the lyrics of David Bowie.

* The art of the Anthropocene: @LegoLostatSea.

* Disney still innovating ways to ruin the Muppets faster and faster; now the series don’t even need to be made to be bad.

* A thread/sincere plea: if you a member of the mainstream/popular press and are writing an article about fandom, you can officially nix any of the following, as it has already been written in 20+ other “101” style articles about fans/fan culture…

We were creating space for ourselves, centering our own positive stories.

* And, once again, Star Trek by the numbers.

Written by gerrycanavan

September 11, 2019 at 3:30 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Return of Sunday Reading! Just Kidding!

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* I have a short piece on resistance to automation in the forum of the new issue of ASAP/Journal. Check it out!

* I’m really stunned to see that the Tiptree Award is on the verge of being renamed. The details of the end of her and her husband’s life are definitely troubling — but decanonizing Tiptree over this single ambiguous incident at the end of her life seems to me to be of a completely different order than the Campbell or the Lovecraft renamings, where the entire body of creative output is being reevaluated.

Faith in science fiction and fantasy.

64% of Americans support labor unions but membership is at a record low.

In academia we need unions more than ever—whether one is an adjunct or tenure track. Our higher education system is being hollowed out by administrators who see institutions of learning as businesses, and are making money at students’ & workers’ expense.

How Far Does Your Tuition Dollar Go?

Marquette University

This institution spends $0.49 on instruction for every dollar it collects in tuition.

This is a Private Nonprofit Four-Year College, University, and/or Professional School and the tuition collected per full-time student or equivalent is $22,584.

How does this school stack up?

The average public institution spends $1.42 on instruction for every dollar collected in tuition.

The average private nonprofit institution spends $0.84 on instruction for every dollar collected in tuition.

The average for-profit institution spends $0.29 on instruction for every dollar collected in tuition.

* A Brief History of Academic Mysteries, Campus Thrillers, and Research Noir.

Inside the African essay factories that churn out university coursework for 115,000 cheating British students every year.

Meritocracy Is Killing High-School Sports.

Adjunct Faculty in an Adjunct Country. Beatriz Llenín Figueroa on the situation at the University of Puerto Rico.

* Syllabus: Critical Algorithm Studies.

* Dialectics of the new Popeye’s chicken sandwich. Panera is losing nearly 100% of its workers every year as fast-food turnover crisis worsens. Waffle House has an official poet laureate.

Amazon Is Looking More and More Like a Nation-State. Amazon is lying about Ring and facial recognition. Amazon’s Next-Day Delivery System Has Brought Chaos And Carnage To America’s Streets — But The World’s Biggest Retailer Has A System To Escape The Blame.

* YouTube reinstated these extremist and white nationalist channels, apologized to them.

* How 9 People Built an Illegal $5M Airbnb Empire in New York.

* The Plan to Use Fitbit Data to Stop Mass Shootings Is One of the Scariest Proposals Yet.

* “Hey, Google! Let me talk to my departed father.”

Twitter’s promise vs. Twitter’s reality.

Immigration panic: how the west fell for manufactured rage. Trump administration seeks to deport children with life-threatening illnesses.

It Is Very Bad That Our President Reportedly Lied About Trade Negotiations With China. Let’s Compare Donald Trump’s Week to the Impeachment Articles Brought Against Nixon, Clinton, and Johnson.

* There’s no FEC anymore. There’s not really an NLRB, either.

Dear America, universal health care is what real freedom looks like.

How Slavery Shaped American Capitalism.

Capitalism Is Making Us Sick: A Q&A With Emily Guendelsberger About Her New Book, On the Clock.

7 ‘Left Wing’ Ideas (Almost) All Americans Can Get Behind.

Liberalism in Theory and Practice.

* The Children’s Crusade: This Colorado charter school is teaching 6th graders how to fight back against shooters.

* Well guys, I’m about to walk out the TNR office doors for the last time. But before I do, I want to share some hard truths about climate change I’ve learned in the last 2.5 yrs reporting here.

North Carolina’s Climate Change Blind Spots Make Dorian More Dangerous. Rising seas ‘could displace 280m people,’ draft UN report warns. New Miami Hurricane Hazard: Dockless Scooters as Projectiles.

* On pregnancy in the Anthropocene.

* The Climate Trail.

How to Win Wisconsin. And elsewhere on the Wisconsin beat: Wisconsin workers embedded with microchips.

* The rape charges were dropped because the victim’s credibility was “seriously, seriously questionable” and the charges could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt, said Justice Danny Chun. The agreed-upon facts are inarguably rape.

* Meanwhile, a Maryland teen has been labeled a child pornographer for sharing a video of her own sex act.

* Good news: Sacklers could hold on to most of personal fortune in proposed Purdue settlement.

* On the greatness of Peanuts (when it was good).

* In the age of the psychonauts.

* “It’s time to talk about James Mattis’s involvement with the Theranos scandal. He’s selling a book, not saving the country from Trump.”

* “Brain-reading tech is coming. The law is not ready to protect us.”

* First is third. Second is first. Third is second.

The Longest Walkable Distance on Earth.

* Here’s a thing that no one asked for but that I think we all need: the style guide alignment chart.

* Compulsory homosexuality in Ireland! Marxist-lesbianism is the state ideology!

* DeepMind Can Now Beat Us at Multiplayer Games, Too.

* Dicey Dungeons rules.

* The Slinky was invented by accident.

* Jordan Peele drops a surprise flick.

Donald was the first child ever diagnosed with autism. Identified in the annals of autism as “Case 1 … Donald T,” he is the initial subject described in a 1943 medical article that announced the discovery of a condition unlike “anything reported so far,” the complex neurological ailment now most often called an autism spectrum disorder, or ASD. At the time, the condition was considered exceedingly rare, limited to Donald and 10 other children—Cases 2 through 11—also cited in that first article.

* On precocious puberty, the hell you didn’t even know was possible.

* Sing to me, muse, of the man of twists and turns…

* My five-alarm-fire Star Wars 9 and Notorious RBG predictions, for the record.

* We’re all rooting for you, sweetie.

* And science has finally found the secret to happiness.

Written by gerrycanavan

September 1, 2019 at 9:17 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Sunday Links!

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* Been waiting for this one for a while: Chris Ware talks Rusty Brown.

* Boots Riley has a key read on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that has been left out of nearly every review or thinkpiece I’ve seen. Here’s one thinkpiece that does take it up.

* Elsewhere on the Tarantino beat: Box Office Milestone: ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ Crosses $200M Globally, one of only two non-franchise films to earn that much this year.

* What Satellite Imagery Tells Us About the Amazon Rain Forest Fires. The Amazon Cannot Be Recovered Once It’s Gone. Why Are We Even Responding to John Delaney? The Democrats are climate deniers.

* Summer on the swollen Great Lakes.

* The Bone Thief died. :( David Koch Was the Ultimate Climate Change Denier.

The Very Real Possibility of President Elizabeth Warren.

* We got him! I’d like to see Ole Donny Trump wriggle out of THIS jam!

Northern Ireland is already spiralling out of control but no one is paying attention.

When Your Rapist Demands Custody.

* Gamergate will always be with us.

* Aaron Bady on Ready or Not.

Such an ending would imply that the ludicrous caricatures we imagine into existence to justify our preposterous wars with each other are, actually, just the pretexts we want and need to justify violence. In other words, it would skewer movies like The Hunt, and the ideological fantasies that divide the country into red and blue caricatures. If The Hunt seems to take a side — endorsing, by all indications, the worldview of its “deplorable” protagonists — Ready or Notnearly ends by suggesting that the stories we might tell ourselves to normalize violence are nonsense.

Instead, as it turns out…

* An update on a bizarre story: Ugandan mothers want justice for their children who died in care of an unlicensed American health worker.

* When You Can’t Afford School Lunch, the Toll Is More Than Just Physical.

The New American Homeless.

* “The difference in average life expectancy between poor and wealthy women widened from 3.9 years to 13.6 years.”

* Insulin Prices Killed Josh Wilkerson. Now His Mother Is Taking On Big Pharma.

* Negative interest rates are coming and they are downright terrifying.

Hellen Keller was a revolutionary socialist who wanted to abolish capitalism lol

* Suffering makes better art.

* Fairy stories have always been radical.

* The legality of owning a kangaroo in the United States. Kudos to Wisconsin for keeping freedom alive.

* And, finally, the story that never needed to be told is here!