Please Enjoy Weekend Links!

* Get your abstracts in! CFP: Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling. And a CFP for a special issue of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies on “The Intersections of Disability and Science Fiction.”

* The schedule of classes for Marquette English is up at Spring 2017. I’ll be on research leave, if you’re wondering why I’m not listed…

* Best Tumblr in forever: Sad Chairs of Academia.

* How to Live Less Anxiously in Academe.

* How Skin-Deep Judgments of Professors Might Influence Student Success.

* “There are many things I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it.”

* The extent to which Trump is floating absolute gibberish cannot be undersold. Even Costanza is superseded in his time. Once more with feeling: On Bullshit.

* What did Trump lie about at the debate, mondo-hugeo chart edition. Donald Trump’s first presidential debate confirmed he has no idea what he’s talking about. Prince Georging, Meflection, and Gobbing: A brief guide to Trump’s rhetorical tricks. A Trump Glossary. You’ll get ’em next time, buddy. What It’s Like to Be a Female Reporter Covering Donald Trump. This May Be The Most Horrible Thing That Donald Trump Believes. When Trump said that not paying taxes ‘makes me smart,’ undecided voters in N.C. gasped. How Donald Trump Set Off a Civil War Within the Right-Wing Media. How to bait Donald Trump. Gray’s. Sports. Almanac. How to evade your taxes the Trump way. More. Even more! Trump Foundation lacks the certification required for charities that solicit money. Cuba! I sold Trump $100,000 worth of pianos. Then he stiffed me. Donald Trump and the truth about race and real estate in America. America is already great. There’s still heroes in the world. And then there’s what happened just this morning.

this might be the most undignified thing a politician has ever done to themselves with a phone and i'm including anthony weiner in this

— Felix Gilman (@felixgilman) September 30, 2016

 

The scariest thing about Trump isn't even Trump himself but how quickly elite Republicans fell into line. What wouldn't they support?

— Jon Schwarz (@tinyrevolution) May 27, 2016

 

* The most American-democracy thing that’s ever happened: But Republicans said the White House didn’t make a forceful case, putting themselves in the awkward position of blaming the president for a bill they enacted into law over Obama’s veto.

* Beyond Clinton or Trump: Nuclear Weapons and Democracy.

* Wisconsin Is Systematically Failing to Provide the Photo IDs Required to Vote in November. What a shocking and unexpected consequence of these well-intentioned, commonsense laws.

* Note: The original headline for this piece was “George W. Bush is Not Your Cuddly Grandpa. George W. Bush can rot in hell.”

* Five questions we need to answer before colonizing Mars. Elon Musk’s spectacular plan to colonise Mars lacks substance. Fun and exciting, not boring and cramped! Is Elon Musk’s Crazy Mars Plan Even Legal?

* What could possibly go wrong? UVM Medical College to Eliminate Lectures.

* No Punishment for ‘Run Them Down’ Tweet.

* Baltimore vs. Marilyn Mosby.

* Why New Jersey’s Trains Aren’t Safer.

* Nicholson Baker goes to school. Reader, I bought it.

* In Praise of Bob Ross.

* Has Pope Francis Failed?

* Another review of Alice Kaplan’s book on The Stranger.

* “Liberalism is working”: Teen accused of stealing 65-cent carton of milk at middle school to face trial.

* Measles are gone from the Americas.

* Silicon Valley’s rhetoric of magical innovation relies on a hidden abode of rare earth mining and hydro-cooled server farms.

* On Premier League Fantasy Football.

* How ‘Daycare’ Became ‘School.’

* The 25 Best Superpowers in the Superpowers Wiki.

*Wonder Woman Writer Greg Rucka Says Diana Has ‘Obviously’ Had Relationships With Women. She was on an island of only women for millennia! So yeah.

* One effect of superhero culture: a proliferation of fan events where Marvel movie heroes and ‘Walking Dead’ stars walk away with six figures (more than most get paid for their real jobs) for a weekend’s work.

* The world passes 400ppm carbon dioxide threshold. Permanently.

* And yet, looking back at The Jetsons intro sequence today, I wonder where the icecaps are in that little illustration of earth. Is some land missing from Central America? Has the North gained land mass? Such questions become more troubling in the context of current concerns about global warming and, once asked, open the floodgates for similar observations. In the intro sequence, flying cars convey the Jetsons and other families from their floating bungalow to other floating buildings like The Little Dipper School, Orbit High School, Shopping Centre, and Spacely Space Rockets Inc. What was once a cute innovation—why not live in floating cities?—becomes troubled by its energy costs and its purpose. Why do the Jetsons and other families live in orbit? What has happened below to force them into the skies?

* Today in on-the-nose metaphors: NASA Is Sinking Into the Ocean.

* Every society gets the post-apocalypse it deserves.

* Big as horror movie.

* There were no casualties in the landslide which occurred earlier this month, but the facility’s new rock climbing facility was completely wiped out. Yes, I suppose they would be.

* Codex Silenda, A Handcrafted Puzzle Book With Pages That Must Be Solved to Unlock the Next One.

* The ADA at Disney.

* Cheating in school as communism.

* Today in neoliberal consumerism: Want to Make Ethical Purchases? Stop Buying Illegal Drugs.

* The Dark, Gritty Tick goes to series. Spoon! But like a dirty, chipped spoon, a spoon that really reflects the darkness of our society and our souls.

* Emulator lets you turn NES games 3D.

* U.S. owes black people reparations for a history of ‘racial terrorism,’ says U.N. panel.

* Striking Prisoners Say Their Guards Have Joined In.

* The Longreads Reading List on Utopias.

* Die a hero, or… Has Whedon Changed, Or Have We Done Changed?

* It’s Official: The Boomerang Kids Won’t Leave. I wonder how many are actually caring for or financially supporting un-, under-, and unable-to-be-employed parents and siblings.

* Let’s Stop Talking About Stranger Things Season Two Before We Ruin It. Friends, I have some terrible news.

* Leave the hot moms alone.

* There’s bad luck, and then there’s: Man Bitten On Penis By Spider For The Second Time This Year.

* Today in terrible ideas I could not denounce more strongly: Is it time for Star Trek: The Next Generation to go Kelvin?

* And at least the kids get it.

amazing: two survive a wreck and got the attention of the navy by spelling out an unignorable sign with palm leaves pic.twitter.com/h2hdmvLC44

— Sebastiaan de With (@sdw) April 21, 2016

Tuesday Links!

* UT President just comes out and says it: tenure is over.

Rather than debate these issues as an all-or-nothing matter, we should implement our system in a way that looks to the purposes tenure serves. In fact, we already do that. American higher education, including UT, has been using an increasing share of non-tenured faculty. In this sense, American higher education has been de-tenuring itself, that is, unleveraging itself, for the last 20 years. My point here is that we need to do this in a purposeful way that is aligned with our large-scale teaching and research goals in ever more detailed ways. We need to use tenure when it is most needed: where competition is the keenest and where research is more central to the enterprise. It is less necessary where those two features aren’t present. Again, my point here is not that I have the answer. My point is that we can’t shy away from an issue even as sacred as how we use tenure. We need to lead the way by implementing everything we do in light of the purposes we claim it promotes.

* Meanwhile: There’s still no STEM shortage.

* For-Profit Colleges as Factories of Debt.

* Isn’t everybody equal now? Can’t women be obnoxious too? Wesleyan Rules That Fraternities Must Accept Women.

* The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel tries to make sense of Wisconsin’s ever-changing voter ID rules.

* I’ve simply never understood how “divestment” was supposed to work as a tactic against climate change. The only thing that threatens to shake this conviction is the fact that Slate agrees.

* Better march harder: Worldwide Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reached Record Levels In 2013.

* Yes we can! U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms.

* Elsewhere in Obama doing a heckuva job: The US just started bombing Syria.

* Police shoot teenage special-needs girl within 20 seconds of arriving to ‘help.’

* What Reparations in America Could Look Like.

* I taught in one of the many social-service organizations known in the nonprofit industrial complex as “re-­entry.” Re-entry’s primary goal is to induct people back into the workforce once they are released from prison or are mired in the bureaucracy of one of the state’s “community supervision” programs, which include jails, probation, parole, or ATIs (alternatives to incarceration). In practical terms, re-entry provides “services,” broadly construed, to economically disenfranchised people who are targeted by the police and as a result are under some form of surveillance by the carceral network.

* Inside Higher Ed debates whether and how you can try to address male pathologies in the classroom without reentering maleness pedagogically.

* Glengarry, Bob Ross.

* What it’s like to have a stroke at 33.

* On this week’s episode of Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver takes a look at the Miss America pageant and asks, “How the f*ck is this still happening?”

* 11/23/63 is coming to Hulu as a series. I feel like I run a link that says this at least three times a year.

* The past isn’t done with us: A Brazilian man whose parents were African slaves could be the oldest living person ever documented after receiving a birth cerficate showing he turned 126 last week, it was reported on Tuesday.

* The past isn’t done with us, part two: Star Trek 3 might reunite William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.

* I’ve had dreams like this: Camera falls from a plane and lands in a pig farm.

* Somebody’s stealing my bit: There’s a new university course focusing on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

* And they say America is a country no longer capable of achieving great things: Rhode Island Man Manages to Get Four DUIs in 30 Hours.

Today Is Tuesday!

* Gasp.

* Worker’s Comp Lessons From an Injured Adjunct.

* Progressive nonprofits that don’t pay their interns.

* At the beginning of April, one of the most important labor unions in U.S. higher education staged an unexpected two-day strike. It wasn’t the American Association of University Professors — the left-leaning professors’ union — or a chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, representing service workers; it was United Auto Workers Local 2865. Auto workers might appear to be an odd group to strike across American university campuses, but Local 2865 represents 12,000 teaching assistants, associate instructors and undergraduate tutors at University of California campuses.

* The Minimum Wage Worker Strikes Back.

* Kavanagh is referring to the lowered rate-per-bed the GEO Group offered Arizona as the national economy cratered in 2008. The rate applied to emergency “temporary” beds  at two of its facilities to house an overflow of prisoners. In exchange for the discount, the state agreed to meet a 100% occupancy rate for all non-emergency beds at both prisons.

* The Hogwarts MOOC is here.

* On the trail of the phantom women who changed American music and then vanished without a trace.

* Carcetti 2016.

* Big Data: A Statistical Analysis of the Work of Bob Ross.

* Coming soon: Approaches to Teaching the Works of Octavia E. Butler, edited by Tarshia L. Stanley.

* DC says it’s finally publishing Grant Morrison’s Multiversity.

* Avoiding Climate Catastrophe Is Super Cheap — But Only If We Act Now. I have some terrible news.

* How to Lie with Data Visualization.

* Casino Says World-Famous Gambler Cheated It Out of $10 Million.

* Zero tolerance watch: Police charge high school student with disorderly conduct for using iPad to prove he’s being bullied.

* KFC Selling Fried Chicken Prom Corsages as World Falls Into Darkness.

* Walt Disney presents: Firefly.

* Science has officially proven the exact age that men get grumpy. Still so many years for me to go.

* Fingers crossed! Wisconsin Republicans To Vote On Secession.

* Uh oh, better cut taxes.

* BREAKING: The Grand Budapest Hotel is a huge hit for Wes Anderson.

* And happy (belated) 80th birthday, Fredric Jameson.