Monday Morning Links!

* My superhero identity has finally been scooped.

* Lots of people are sharing this one, on hyperexploited labor in the academy: Truman Capote Award Acceptance Speech. As with most of this sort of adjunct activist some of its conclusions strike me as emotionally rather than factually correct — specifically, it needs to find a way to make tenured and tenure-track faculty the villains of the story, in order to make the death of the university a moral narrative about betrayal rather than a political narrative about the management class’s construction of austerity — but it’s undoubtedly a powerful read.

* I did this one already, but what the hell: Ten Theses In Support of Teaching and Against Learning Outcomes.

* Open Access (OA) is the movement to make academic research available without charge, typically via digital networks. Like many cyberlibertarian causes OA is roundly celebrated by advocates from across the political spectrum. Yet like many of those causes, OA’s lack of clear grounding in an identifiable political framework means that it may well not only fail to serve the political goals of some of its supporters, and may in fact work against them. In particular, OA is difficult to reconcile with Marxist accounts of labor, and on its face appears not to advance but to actively mitigate against achievement of Marxist goals for the emancipation of labor. In part this stems from a widespread misunderstanding of Marx’s own attitude toward intellectual work, which to Marx was not categorically different from other forms of labor, though was in danger of becoming so precisely through the denial of the value of the end products of intellectual work. This dynamic is particularly visible in the humanities, where OA advocacy routinely includes disparagement of academic labor, and of the value produced by that labor.

* Bring on the 403(b) lawsuits.

* On being married to an academic.

* It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe: Nobel academy member calls Bob Dylan’s silence ‘arrogant.’

Tried to compose a tweet where Literature would be delighted that its ex, who left it for Music, was having trouble in its new relationship.

— Aaron Bady (@zunguzungu) October 22, 2016

* Eugenics and the academy. Racism and standardized testing. Whiteness and international relations.

* Don’t drink bottled water.

* Language Log reads the bookshelf in the linguist’s office set in Arrival (out next month!).

* After years of neglect, public higher education is at a tipping point.

* Mass Incarceration And Its Mystification: A Review Of The 13th.

* Springsteen and Catholicism.

* White masculinity as cloning.

* Balibar on exploitation.

* Parenting is weird. If God worked at a pet store, He’d be fired. Part Two. It’s a mystery!!! Wooooooooooh! The Fox and the Hedgehog. Science and technology have reached their limit. Self-destructive beverage selection: a guide. Motivational comics. Has the media gotten worse, or has society? Understanding the presidency. The oldest recorded joke is from Sumeria, circa 1900 B.C. There’s a monster under my bed.

* Tenure Denials Set Off Alarm Bells, and a Book, About Obstacles for Minority Faculty.

* Trump’s Milwaukee Problem. Let’s Talk About the Senate. From Pot To Guns To School Funding: Here’s What’s On The Ballot In Your State. Todd Akin and the “shy” voter. The banality of Trump. The latest polls indicate the possibility of a genuine electoral disaster for the GOP. A short history of white people rigging elections. Having not yet won it back yet, Dems are already getting ready to lose the Senate (again) in 2018. The Democrats are likely to win a majority of House votes, but not a majority of House seats. Again. Today in uncannily accurate metaphors. This all seems perfectly appropriate. Even Dunkin Donuts is suffering. But at least there’s a bright side. On the other hand.

Slavery: Colorado

Yes, you read that right. There is a vote on slavery in 2016. The Colorado state constitution currently bans slavery and “involuntary servitude” … except if it’s used as punishment for a crime. This amendment would get rid of that exception and say that slavery is not okay, ever.

* And so, too, with the new civic faith enshrined in Hamilton: we may have found a few new songs to sing about the gods of our troubled history, but when it comes to the stories we count on to tell us who we are, we remain caught in an endless refrain.

* Speaking of endless refrain: Emmett Till memorial in Mississippi is now pierced by bullet holes.

* District Judge John McKeon, who oversees a three-county area of eastern Montana, cited that exception this month when he gave the father a 30-year suspended sentence after his guilty plea to incest and ordered him to spend 60 days in jail over the next six months, giving him credit for the 17 days already served. His sentence requires him to undergo sex offender treatment and includes many other restrictions.

* On Anime Feminist. (via MeFi)

* Today in the Year of Kate McKinnon: ten minutes of her Ghostbusters outtakes.

* Jessica Jones’s Second Season Will Only Feature Female Directors.

* I don’t really think they should do Luke Cage season two — or Jessica Jones for that matter, as Daredevil proved already — but just like I’d love to see a Hellcat series with Jessica Jones as a supporting player I’d love to see Misty Knight guest starring Luke Cage.

* The Case against Black Mirror. I haven’t been able to tune in to the new season yet but the backlash surprises me. This was one of the best shows on TV before! What happened?

* Famous authors and their rejection slips.

* How much for a hotel on AT&TTW? AT&T to buy Time Warner for $85.4 billion.

* New York vs. Airbnb.

* “This is still the greatest NYT correction of all time imo.”

* This is [chokes] great. It’s great if they do this.

* This, on the other hand, is unbelievably awful: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses a decade after going to war. Everyone involved in trying to claw back this money should be ashamed of themselves.

* Gee, you don’t say: U.S. Parents Are Sweating And Hustling To Pay For Child Care.

* Welcome to the Machinocene.

* I’ve discovered the secret to immortality.

* And there’s a new Grow game out for that mid-2000s nostalgia factor we all crave. Solution here when you’re done messing around…

 

 

 

Tuesday!

* Gasp! “Sociologists have found that whites refer to ‘qualifications’ and a meritocratic distribution of opportunities and rewards, and the purported failure of blacks to live up to this meritocratic standard, to bolster the belief that racial inequality in the United States has some legitimacy,” Samson writes in the paper. “However, the results here suggest that the importance of meritocratic criteria for whites varies depending upon certain circumstances. To wit, white Californians do not hold a principled commitment to a fixed standard of merit.”

* “Zombies in the Academy.”

Moore: There is no hiding from this. We are both isolated and co-experiencing zombification, but that also means there is resistance and complication everywhere you want to look. Most often it in the corridors and the grumbled shuffling between committee meetings, the universal language of bureaucratization. We are not alone and so we are going to take what we do best and invert it to examine the conditions of our own existence…. The zombie is not a monster; it is the horror of our own selves dropping round for a quick snack.

* A California law school is claiming that it has a First Amendment right not to help students find out how many of its graduates are passing the state’s bar exam.

* “One can make a legitimate, state-sanctioned choice not to vaccinate,” the bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan and his co-authors write, “but that does not protect the person making that choice against the consequences of that choice for others.” Since epidemiologists today can reliably determine the source of a viral infection, the authors argue, a parent who decides not to vaccinate his kid and thus endangers another child is clearly at fault and could be charged with criminally negligent homicide or sued for damages.

* Obama announces plan to reform national intelligence by putting the guy who lied to Congress about national intelligence in charge of the investigation.

* Today in biopower: Dying Teen Is Being Denied A Heart Transplant Because He’s Had Trouble With The Law. How 26 Cents Nearly Cost This Man His Health Coverage For Life-Saving Cancer Treatment.

* Reverse Big Bang Theory coming this fall.

Deadline reports that it’s just snapped up Gorgeous Morons, a show that turns sitcom convention on its ear by concerning “two stunningly handsome but dumb brothers, a model and a personal trainer, who find their lives rocked by their new roommate, a female literature PhD. who is merely very attractive”—i.e. she’s gorgeous by most reasonable standards, but likely wears glasses, and maybe sometimes a cardigan.

* Alex Pareene says don’t vote for Cory Booker today. I’m advising Alex not to read the newspaper tomorrow.

* And Gavin Mueller watches Elysium so you don’t have to.