Traditional Followup Linkpost Scenario Where I Do One The Next Day after Promising Myself I Won’t Let It Go a Whole Month Again This Time

(Yesterday’s post here, including a bunch of “personal news” updates about recent projects. Get your library to buy The Cambridge History of Science Fiction!)

* Your Stan Lee obituaries. Excelsior. And a tiny little bit of inspiration for a guy whose 39th birthday is this week:

Stan Lee didn't create the Fantastic Four until he was 39. Everything we know about Stan Lee, his entire world-changing body of work, occurred in the second half of his long life.

— Brett White (@brettwhite) November 12, 2018

* One of the most important stories on the planet right now: As Brazil’s Far Right Leader Threatens the Amazon, One Tribe Pushes Back.

* When elections are no longer legitimate. The escalation in GOP conspiracy-mongering and the decision to have party leaders trumpet these theories directly, as opposed to relying on surrogates and propaganda outlets, is indeed very worrying. How fascism works.

1. When electoral procedures lose popular legitimacy, it is nearly impossible to get that legitimacy back. Elections are one great way of building popular legitimacy, and if by assumption they no longer do, what will?
2. Non-electoral sources of power are particularly dangerous when elections no longer legitimately empower politicians. It now falls to the very politicians who are involved in the recount to vouch for its legitimacy. The safest way to defend that legitimacy would be for the losing candidates to rebuke the President, directly and publicly. A public endorsement would be most meaningful if it were to come from, for example, DeSantis. Let us just ponder how likely that is.
3. The downstream consequences from the loss of electoral legitimacy are nearly impossible to predict. I suspect that one consequence will be an ever-greater tolerance for executive malfeasance, on the logic that Congressional representatives and state governments lack democratic legitimacy.

* Luckily, Chuck Schumer is up to the challenge.

* Andrew Gillum appears in a documentary about Bush v. Gore, c. 2000.

* Grad school as conversion therapy.

* U.S. Colleges See Drop in Foreign Students for Second Year Running.

* “It’s annoying to just sit there staring at one screen for so long,” said freshman Mitchel Storman, 14, who spends close to five hours a day on Summit classes in algebra, biology, English, world history, and physics. “You have to teach yourself.”

It is impossible, after thousands of years of human civilization, that there is still "low hanging fruit" in the realm of pedagogical effectiveness. Everyone knows, in their heart of hearts, that effectiveness tracks closely with teacher attention and resources. That's it.

— Adam Kotsko (@adamkotsko) November 13, 2018

The last generation of educational policy in America has been based on a systematic refusal to do the only thing that works, because that costs money. That's it. It's all a complete scam, and again, an entire generation's education has been sacrificed on that altar.

— Adam Kotsko (@adamkotsko) November 13, 2018

* Enough With All the Innovation.

* It has by the fall of 2018 become commonplace to describe the 499 known victims of Larry Nassar as “breaking their silence,” though in fact they were never, as a group, particularly silent. Over the course of at least 20 years of consistent abuse, women and girls reported to every proximate authority. They told their parents. They told gymnastics coaches, running coaches, softball coaches. They told Michigan State University police and Meridian Township police. They told physicians and psychologists. They told university administrators. They told, repeatedly, USA Gymnastics. They told one another. Athletes were interviewed, reports were written up, charges recommended. The story of Larry Nassar is not a story of silence. The story of Larry Nassar is that of an edifice of trust so resilient, so impermeable to common sense, that it endured for decades against the allegations of so many women. Amazing deep read on the Larry Nassar case and how he got away with his crimes for so long.

* The NRA told doctors to “stay in your lane” on guns. I’m a doctor. This is my lane.

* What Happened When a Nation Erased Birthright Citizenship.

* “It is almost like a punch in the gut. Like, wow, you’ve really gone this far to affect children? And it’s just like, have we sunk this low? That’s my feeling,” said the official, who could not speak on the record about the policy. Knife Salesman Very Sad About Stabbing.

* Amazon’s HQ2 Spectacle Isn’t Just Shameful—It Should Be Illegal. Congrats to these hardscrabble communities who just caught a huge break.

So after all the ritual abasements, Amazon just picked the east coast cities that gave them the most proximity to cultural and political power. Would love to see numbers on how much other cities spent—and how much more they were willing to spend—to host an overgrown parasite.

— Andrew Ferguson (@epiktistes) November 13, 2018

* The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014). And elsewhere on the Foxconn beat: How does Tony Evers affect Foxconn?

* Two hours from here: Baraboo school district condemns a photo showing a large group of students giving Nazi salute. Maybe the UW should rethink that whole history is over thing.

* California as the surface of the moon.

The current weather is literally "Smoke". #CaliforniaFires pic.twitter.com/IDceEybRMq

— Mike McCaffrey (@mikemccaffrey) November 12, 2018

* Unsafe at any concentration.

* The law, in its majestic equality.

* Twilight of Harley Davidson.

* The Indus civilisation seems to have flourished for 700 years without armour, weapons, inequality or royalty. Here’s how to build a paradise on Earth.

* How AIs cheat.

* Thanks for waiting until after the election to tell anyone! Veterans haven’t received GI Bill benefits for months due to ongoing IT issues at VA. And please, make sure you update me on that horrible caravan of rapists and murderers that is heading towards our country, when you get a moment…

* And tonight, on the most dramatic Rose Ceremony of all time, we’ll finally find out who is the Attorney General.

i came close to exploding with joy when i saw this, bless @Ocasio2018 @IlhanMN @RashidaTlaib @AyannaPressley pic.twitter.com/oN9bya7DNi

— (((rebecca rosenberg))) (@missrrosenberg) November 12, 2018

Weekend Links!

* Angela Davis at Marquette, March 29.

* CFP: From Sanctuary to Sabotage: Fighting the Fascist Creep at and beyond Universities.

* “Virtually nothing about our standard model of sleep existed as we know it two centuries ago.”

* Modern love.

* 20 Years Ago, Starship Troopers Showed Us What Happens When Fascism Wins.

* 11 things I learned about academia by analysing 14 million RateMyProfessor reviews.

* Remember that Iowa lawmaker who wanted to purge universities of Democrats? Guess what!

* When the CIA read Foucault.

* Nice, low-key interview with Kim Stanley Robinson on Flash Forward TV.

* Abigail Nussbaum walks you through her Hugo short fiction nominations.
* Trump and the Myth of Nuclear Flexibility.

* Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War.

* My alma mater in the news!

* America divided into states with the population of California. Which is to say, if we allow ourselves a crudely democratic understanding of what representative democracy should be, there would only be 16 senators in a Senate that fairly represented people living in California.

* America has locked up so many black people it has warped our sense of reality.

* Exiting the Roach Motel, or, What’s the Matter with the Democratic Party?

The Democratic Party is a roach motel for leftists. We go in full of vision and energy, like the Sanders kids, like the Ellison supporters, and we get crushed and stuck in the slime. Sanders and Ellison had to play by the rules and call for continuing support for the Dems after their losses. Having played the game, they were stuck with the rules in the roach motel. Once you go in, you may never come out.

* Slavery and the academy.

* Twilight of the meritocrats.

* Palantir and ICE. Freeze on H-1B Visas. Customs Giving Literacy Tests At JFK Is A Thing Now. Deportation fears impacting criminal case. Don’t Get Your Undocumented Friends in Trouble: A How-To. Are you listening, SXSW?

* White House aide Sebastian Gorka said Wednesday that objections to President Donald Trump’s creation of a new office to highlight crimes committed by undocumented immigrants are “un-American.” All right, then, I’ll go to Hell….

* “Accompanied by his wife Jessica, a U.S. citizen who is six months pregnant with their first child.” Trump administration considering separating women, children at U.S.-Mexico border. Detained after a press conference, Daniela Vargas was seven when she came to the U.S. A 13-Year-Old Girl Sobbed While Recording Her Immigrant Father Get Arrested By ICE Agents. ICE Plans To Deport Oregon Immigrant With 5 Children, No Criminal Background. Immigration agents deport Houston father of two who previously held immigration reprieve. After Decades In The U.S., NY Immigrant With Years-Old Pot Misdemeanor Faces Deportation. Does even a single person with a conscience work for this administration?

* Kushner and Flynn. Two other Trump advisers also spoke with Russian envoy during GOP convention. Your cheat sheet to four potential investigations of Russia and President Trump. Mysteries of Jeff Sessions. Recusal is not enough. Isn’t it pretty to think so? The Innocent Explanation. Why Trump Sounding ‘Presidential’ Only Makes Him More Dangerous. Style and Substance. Trumpism and heroism. You Cretins Are Going To Get Thousands Of People Killed. This one broke while I was tagging the post.

Jeff Sessions looks like a child that got turned into an old man for stealing a pie from a witch's window sill. pic.twitter.com/NxNQZURRjk

— Adam Murray (@Atom_Murray) February 9, 2017

y'all, i apologize. i got so excited to do racism that i slipped up and did a dang perjury! pic.twitter.com/sl04VNuTeG

— ceeks (@70Ceeks) March 2, 2017

* Hard to blame them: European Parliament votes to end visa-free travel for Americans.

* Four mosques have burned in seven weeks. Nearly half of the country’s Jewish community centers have received bomb threats in 2017. Today’s arrest (an apparent copycat) covered less than 10% of that.

* Destroying the planet is too important to let a silly little thing like national borders get in the way. The end of the Great Lakes. Gutting the Chesapeake Bay. Massive Permafrost Thaw Documented in Canada, Portends Huge Carbon Release. Antarctica hits record high temperature at balmy 63.5°F.

there’s
no
future
because
granddad
thought
it
would
be
funny
if
Trump
were
president

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 1, 2017

* The rich are different: they control everything.

* Adam Roberts rereads The Time Machine.

* The Feminist Bookstore Movement.

* Fascinated by this: Price of Lab-Grown Burger Falls from $325K to $11.36.

* A rough stat from up the street: Only 1 in 5 black students enrolled at UW-Milwaukee graduates in 6 years.

* Team Plagiarizes Golden State Warriors. Team Is Undefeated.

* Could different borders save Europe?

Could different borders save Europe? Ethnographic maps suggest an alternative to the continent's current configuration of artificial states pic.twitter.com/eAETsKtoVI

— Nicholas Danforth (@NicholasDanfort) March 2, 2017

* “We concluded that Ms. Conway acted inadvertently and is highly unlikely to do so again,” he wrote. “Ms. Conway has acknowledged her understanding of the standards and has reiterated her commitment to abiding by them in the future.”

* A diabetic boy’s parents ‘didn’t believe in doctors.’ Now they’re guilty of his murder.

* Are the Yuuzhan Vong coming back?

* After oil was discovered on their Oklahoma reservation, the Osage Nation became the richest people per capita in the world. Then they began to be murdered off mysteriously. In 1924 the nascent FBI sent a team of undercover agents, including a Native American, to the Osage reservation.

* 69 Cock Lane is yours for £449,950, but is it Britain’s naughtiest address?

* Study: half of the studies you read about in the news are wrong (And yes, this could be one of them).

* This is the future liberals want. Though of course the meme is good too.

this is the future that liberals want pic.twitter.com/Ha8vbroPoU

— o_O (@franglophonic) March 2, 2017

This is the future liberals want. pic.twitter.com/9iH1ddpgqV

— Dan Hassler-Forest (@DanHF) March 2, 2017

This is the future that liberals want. pic.twitter.com/68FVp6pv5v

— Freddie Campion (@FreddieCampion) March 2, 2017

This is the future that liberals want. pic.twitter.com/YfA08Konou

— Maris Kreizman (@mariskreizman) March 2, 2017

Too good to remain hidden behind an anon account: This is the future liberals want. pic.twitter.com/vpWKBFzWkx

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 2, 2017

* But not this one: “basically a Fitbit for your man bits that tracks thrust speed and velocity.”

* Disney is super proud of itself for this incredibly progressive leap forward. Next: Scar, Ursula, and Captain Hook were all gay, too!

* There’s nothing sweet in life: Protesting Dr. Seuss Week.

* Nobody hates college more than the people who run colleges.

* A transgender boy just won the Texas girls’ state wrestling championship.

* No More Saturday Marches. While the Iron Is Hot: The Case for the Women’s Strike.

* The line must be drawn — here!

* Ethical zoo.

* A People’s History of Daria.

* These colleges are better than Harvard at making poor kids rich.

* George W. Bush, with the soul of an artist.

die in jail serving consecutive life sentences or live long enough to become a beloved grandfatherly elder statesman https://t.co/DDorNHjHOb

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 2, 2017

* Massive Open Online Rubber Arrow through the Head.

* You know what? Fine.

* Statement of teaching philosophy.

* This week’s I Was There Too interviews someone I’ve always wondered about, the actor who replaced Crispin Glover in Back to the Future Part Two. The Biff episode was good too though if you follow Back to the Future arcana you’ve probably heard a lot of it before.

I’ll be nominating it for a Hugo next year. @BenRobertson @marc_laidlaw

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 4, 2017

* Trump’s worst crime is forcing me to agree with David Frum.

* Neoliberalism in everything: “Ark Encounter doesn’t live up to economic promise.”

* NASA’s about to learn a valuable lesson about the Internet.

* And the positive reviews have done it: I’m going to ruin my career and buy a Nintendo Switch so I can play the new Zelda.

Wednesday Links

* Our laws regarding parenthood are in dire need of revision: Louisiana Gay Dad Raises Child, But He’s Powerless as Partner Skips Town With Boy.

But when the men’s relationship fell apart, his partner determined he was the biological father and took the boy out of state to Texas and eventually to Washington State.

Louisiana does not recognize same-sex marriage or second-parent adoption, so Liuzza was left with no legal parental rights.

* The Sound and the Fury, as Faulker absolutely, definitely intended.

* Obama’s Scramble for Africa.

* A secret LEGO vault at LEGO HQ contains all sets ever manufactured. Yes please.

* “If he’s lost National Review, he’s lost the right.” Given how strident Romney has been that he definitely can’t release any more tax returns, it’s a bit odd to me that so many of his fellow travelers are turning on him. Why not take him at his word that the returns are too toxic to see the light of day?

* And Bill Murray almost played Batman? This truly is the darkest timeline.

The Dictatorship of Flies

When the trumpet sounded
everything was prepared on earth,
and Jehovah gave the world
to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other corporations.
The United Fruit Company
reserved for itself the most juicy
piece, the central coast of my world,
the delicate waist of America…

From my Facebook news feed: incoming Attorney General Eric Holder’s relationship with Chiquita. I usually outsource my commentary on Chiquita to Pablo Neruda and Gabriel García Márquez, but suffice it to say, generally speaking, this is perhaps my least favorite corporate conglomerate. It’s really, really unfortunate that Holder was involved with them, though I must admit that his actions as their counsel in this particular instance don’t strike me as especially reprehensible in context. Glen Greenwald for the defense:

I’ve seen some attempts to criticize Holder based upon clients he has represented while in private practice, most notably his defense of Chiquita Brands in a criminal case brought by the DOJ arising out of Chiquita’s payments and other support to Colombian death squads. Attempts to criticize a lawyer for representing unsavory or even evil clients are inherently illegitimate and wrong — period. Anybody who believes in core liberties should want even the most culpable parties to have zealous representation before the Government can impose punishments or other sanctions. Lawyers who defend even the worst parties are performing a vital service for our justice system. Holder is no more tainted by his defense of Chiquita than lawyers who defend accused terrorists at Guantanamo are tainted by that.

Who Is Eric Holder?

Who is Eric Holder? Likely, he’s your next attorney general.

A New York City native who graduated from Columbia University and Columbia Law School, Holder spent years as a federal prosecutor—a job in which he earned a reputation as tough and aggressive foe of public corruption. After serving in the public integrity section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and later a District of Columbia Superior Court judge, Holder was named by President Clinton as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. He became deputy attorney general in 1997 under Janet Reno and was viewed as a centrist on most law enforcement issues, though he has sharply criticized the secrecy and the expansive views of executive power advanced by the Bush Justice Department.