brain drain | Gerry Canavan

* SFRA Awards 2016. Congrats all!

* Note to all sf writers: If your future doesn’t somehow address the problem of distributed harassment networks, you’re not taking the present seriously enough.

* The Student Loan Suicides. New Jersey’s Student Loan Program is ‘State-Sanctioned Loan-Sharking.’

* There is money available in the digital humanities in a way that there has never been money in English departments, ever. With very limited exceptions, the idea that one could get a six-figure grant for doing something in English is just unheard of. The only types of grants people typically got — with the exception of major career-capping grants like Guggenheims — were salary replacement for a year to write a book. That was the best we could hope for. So the idea that all of a sudden there was some part of English where someone could get $300,000 to $400,000 grants was both politically striking and disturbing. It wasn’t like the leading figures in English were saying we have to have this large pot of money for DH. It was external people, especially Mellon and the NEH — under the influence of some of the big DH people, whose animus for the rest of English was palpable and explicit — who decided to do this. This has had a tremendously deforming effect.

* So the problem isn’t that we can’t win reformist victories for workers. History has shown that we can. The problem is what comes after victory, and we need a theory of socialism and social democracy that prepares our movements for that phase.

* Is it better to hope or to despair? Do you want to create better art, or do you want a better world in which to create? Are you an artist or an activist? Yes.

* Life after the end of the world: California Heat Wave Spells Doom For Avocados.

* The richest, most powerful, most prosperous nation in human history.

* Guy Leaves Fake Animal Facts All Over Los Angeles Zoo.

* Guns & D&D.

* Brain-drain as social justice.

* Butler and Trump (though I should say she was really thinking of Reagan, who used the same slogan).

* The greying of the homeless.

* Teen who urged boyfriend to kill himself will stand trial.

* A Look at the Use of Drones During the Obama Administration.

* Stereogum reports five years of hard paperwork for Apple has finally paid off, and the company has obtained a patent on technology that will disable your phone’s camera when it detects a specific infrared signal. In the time it took you to read that sentence, you probably also had the three seconds of reflection time it would take a reasonable person to think, “Oh, that sounds extremely problematic.”

* 2 weeks out, and Trump’s convention is a total mess. Sad! TPM continues to pound the Trump fundraising saga. Tracing Donald Trump’s Social Media Ties to White Supremacists. The latest example.

* Hillary Clinton was the force behind a little-known breakthrough in transgender rights. So why doesn’t she talk about it?

* Still one of my favorite images on the web ever: Richmond Golf Club, Temporary Rules (1940).

* You just can’t win: Closing apps to save your battery only makes things worse.

* The things you learn from Lazy Doctor Who: the original series one did an (now lost) Dalek episode without the Doctor or Companions.

* New Study Busts the Myth That Knights Couldn’t Move Well in Armor.

* We can either spend our time thinking and funding tentacle porn or we can spend our time thinking and funding civilization. I know what I’d pick…