Posts Tagged ‘brains’
Thursday Afternoon Links!
* Mark Z. Danielewski has written a pilot for a potential House of Leaves TV series. It’s good! The question of adapting the novel wound up being a minor subtheme in our discussion of the book in my summer grad class last month, so I was gratified to actually get to see the script — and directly incorporating the novel into the storyworld of the TV series seems like an intriguing solution to the book’s basic unfilmability. I think I hope someone makes it!
* I haven’t had a chance to see Ant-Man and the Wasp yet, so I’m gratified someone went ahead and wrote my triennial rant about franchise fictions and narrative closure on my behalf.
* Texas Studies in Literature and Language has a special issue on Wes Anderson.
* CFP for the SFRA guaranteed panel at ASLE 19. ASLE 19 (in Davis, CA) is a week after the planned dates for SFRA 19 in Hawaii, so if you’re going to the West Coast anyway it could be almost like a two-for-one…
* The second issue of Fantastika Journal is now available.
* That the things that gave my life meaning growing up have all become vectors for recruitment to misogynistic and white nationalist hate groups is the bitterest surprise of my middle age. That and Trump. Two bitterest surprises.
* Nominations Are Open for the 2018 Brittle Paper Awards.
* Ken Liu Presents Broken Stars, A New Anthology of Chinese Short Speculative Fiction.
* The Fall of Wisconsin. How to win Wisconsin back.
* Shakespeare in the state parks.
* The Self-Helpification of Academe: How feel-good nostrums cover up the university’s cruelty.
* Another piece on searching for work outside academia.
* Professor Faces Fraud Charges for False Job Offer. Reading the confession letter just makes me cringe.
* His University Asked Him to Build an Emoji-Themed Parade Float. Then It Fired Him.
* Why Donald Trump Nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Brett Kavanaugh Will Mean Challenging Times For Environmental Laws. The Vice Report. The Coming Era of Forced Abortions. The end of net neutrality. The imperial presidency 2.0. Trump’s Supreme Court Pick Could Spell a Fresh Hell for Workers’ Rights. Brett Kavanaugh Ruled Against Workers When No One Else Did. The issue with Kavanaugh is that he seems completely reactionary, bouncing from one indefensible position to another, without applying any judgment whatsoever. Liberal media in full effect. The Liberal Case for Kavanaugh Is Complete Crap. He’s a very normal Republican pick — that’s the problem. Establishment Extremist. What’s coming. It’s bad y’all. Someone investigate precisely how this deal was made and what the terms were. And from the archives: The Three Alitos.
* The Supreme Court: still bad.
* Capitalism is ruining science. The Business Veto: The demise of social democracy shows the precariousness of any project of reform under capitalism.
* Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras.
* Technoleviathan: China, Silicon Valley, and the rise of the global surveillance state. How Artificial Intelligence Will Reshape the Global Order.
* Silicon Valley Is Bending Over Backward to Cater to the Far Right.
* How Silicon Valley Fuels an Informal Caste System. Rule-Making as Structural Violence: From a Taxi to Uber Economy in San Francisco.
* Former Obama Officials Are Riding Out The Trump Years By Cashing In.
* The end of NATO. ‘They Will Die in Tallinn’: Estonia Girds for War With Russia.
* Trump is set to separate more than 200,000 U.S.-born children from their parents. Trump’s Office of Refugee Resettlement Is Budgeting for a Surge in Child Separations. ‘Don’t You Know That We Hate You People?’ ICE is lawless, racial profiling edition. Where Cities and Counties Are Detaining Immigrants. Pregnant Women Say They Miscarried In Immigration Detention And Didn’t Get The Care They Needed. Government Told Immigrant Parents to Pay for DNA Tests to Get Kids Back, Advocate Says. As Migrant Families Are Reunited, Some Children Don’t Recognize Their Mothers. Deported after Trump order, Central Americans grieve for lost children. ‘What if I lose her forever?’ Undocumented Grover Beach mother deported despite community rallying in her support. Facing a Tuesday deadline to reunite about 100 migrant toddlers with their parents, feds say they’ve reunited 2. Inside The Courts Where Some Immigrants Plead Guilty Without Knowing What’s Happening. Now they’re coming for grandmas.
So that's 50 kids matched and reunited in two weeks. At that pace we're looking at OVER TWO YEARS to match and reunite the approximately 3000 children in its custody that have been taken from their parents.
Not acceptable.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 9, 2018
They have been extremely clear: there is no nonwhite migration of any sort that is legitimate. They’ve attacked asylum seekers, visa applicants, DACA recipients, green card holders, naturalized citizens. Any status, legal or illegal, is purely contingent. It’s ethnic cleansing. https://t.co/djp8cpiZz9
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 11, 2018
And as the cruelty ramps up we are seeing the justifications becoming more freeform and loose, closer and closer to unapologetic racism. They are dropping any pretense this is about following rules.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 11, 2018
| ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄|
SEEKING ASYLUM IS A
RIGHT PROTECTED IN
INTERNATIONAL LAW. THIS
PROTECTION INCLUDES
A PROHIBITION ON
PENALTIES FOR IRREGULAR
ENTRY.
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/ づ#HistorianSignBunny— Steven Schwinghamer (@s_schwinghamer) July 12, 2018
If you are not among the groups being targeted and demonized and attacked by this administration and its lackeys and minions, you have a moral duty to stand with those who are.
— Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) July 9, 2018
* Woman arrested in assault of 91-year-old Mexican man who was told to ‘go back to your country.’
* There’s been a spate of violent far-right extremism since the 2016 election.
* If you’re anti- antifa, that must mean…
* It’s Not Civil Disobedience if You Ask for Permission.
* Liberalism, legitimacy, and loving the Parkland kids.
* Why Marx’s Capital Still Matters.
* Nixon’s $7B carbon tax forms centerpiece of energy agenda.
* The Industrial Age May Have Actually Been Kind of a Bad Idea.
* An interview with Julia Salazar. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, In Her Own Words. Cynthia Nixon: I’m a democratic socialist. Meanwhile our old pal Joe Crowley looks like he’s trying to get away with something.
* We Should Embrace the Ambiguity of the 14th Amendment.
* Alan Dershowitz is ALL IN on Trump. But he’s not the only person with some truly around-the-bend ideas of what lawsuits can do.
* Weird science: Girls sometimes inherit almost two full sets of their dad’s genes, which seems to cause rare cancers.
* An Arkansas man complained about police abuse. Then town officials ruined his life.
* Did… did Milwaukee write this?
* Jeff Bezos Is Now $50 Billion Richer Than Anyone Else on Earth.
* All 12 Thai Boys Successfully Rescued from Cave after Third Dangerous Mission. The only person unhappy is Elon.
* WHO’s Language on Breastfeeding Really Is Flawed. This was our experience with breastfeeding for sure; I’m sure it’s great for a lot of people but we needed formula as a supplement from the first night on. That said, the corporate forces that promote formula over breastfeeding are utterly gross.
* When the relationship status truly is complicated.
* Scotland’s official plan if the Loch Ness Monster is found.
* Japan and the stay-at-home dad.
* Reality Winner and the espionage act.
* My Best Friend Lost His Life to the Gig Economy.
* When your child reveals sexual abuse from your parent.
* The Socialist Case for School Integration.
* Your town tomorrow: Kure residents cut off from outside world due to flooding.
* I knew wearing a tie was making me stupid.
* Bad subtitling is a daily problem for deaf viewers.
* How swimming pools became a flashpoint of racial tension in America.
* California brings emissions down below 1990 levels. But it’s not all good news.
* Feminist Apparel CEO Fires Entire Staff After They Learn He’s An Admitted Sexual Abuser. RIP, Papa John.
* There is too much uncertainty in sports; even if you bribe the officials, something unaccounted for could still cause the “wrong” result. It can be a bad idea to gather large crowds opposed to your team (and, by extension, your dictatorship). During Franco’s rule, Barcelona FC’s stadium was the only place the Catalans could wave their flag and sing their songs. Dictators are better off with tyranny and oppression. Football is for people who can accept a loss.
* David Graeber’s new book argues that many of us are toiling in dummy jobs with no ostensible purpose. Any poll will show you he has a point. But his thesis is built on scant evidence and dubious claims of a ruling class conspiring to keep us busy. Bullshit jobs exist not due to orchestrated oppression but because of something altogether simpler: bad managers.
* An even tougher review of a book that seems like a big step down from Debt.
* The SAT, constantly innovating new ways to make teenagers unhappy.
* Through such characters, Muluneh’s work explores the layered psychic realms of blackness and womanhood that the African-American science fiction writer Octavia Butler, whom she cites as a major influence, explored through her otherworldly prose. In the process, Muluneh’s work has helped reorient the way black women are perceived. “As women, especially as African women,” Muluneh said, “we forget—and the world forgets—our positioning in history and religion and culture.”
* And amusing ourselves to death: 12 theme parks where the danger is real.
I sort of feel like I’m taking the bait on this, but: Can you imagine the copy they *rejected* for this Handmaid's Tale pinot noir? https://t.co/QPHkYWsBw6 pic.twitter.com/fT86HGhirx
— Lauren Kelley (@lauren_kelley) July 10, 2018
well, back to the grind pic.twitter.com/PLL7F66DGI
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 9, 2018
Written by gerrycanavan
July 12, 2018 at 1:34 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #dads, 14th Amendment, 3D printing, academia, academic jobs, Air Force One, Alan Dershowitz, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Amazon, America, Amitav Ghosh, and they said my work was useless, Andrew Cuomo, Ant-Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Anthropcene, antifa, apocalypse, Arkansas, art, artificial intelligence, ASLE, asylum, authoritarianism, autism, Barack Obama, billionaires, Billy Dee Williams, Bobcat Goldthwait, border patrol, brains, branded content, breastfeeding, Brett Kavanaugh, Brexit, Brittle Paper, bullshit jobs, California, capitalism, carbon, caste systems, CFPs, China, Chinese science fiction, civil disobedience, civility, class struggle, climate change, closure, comics, conferences, corruption, cryptozoology, Cynthia Nixon, David Brooks, David Graeber, debt, deportation, dictators, dictatorships, domestic terrorism, Donald Trump, dramatic rescues, dreams, dystopia, ecology, Elon Musk, emissions, Episode 9, espionage, Estonia, fact-checking, Fantasika Journal, fascism, flooding, franchise fiction, Gamergate, games, gaming, gig economy, government, governmentality, grandmas, guns, hate, House of Leaves, How the University Works, I grow old, ice, immigration, impeachment, industrialization, integration, it's complicated, Japan, Jeff Bezos, Julia Salazar, Ken Liu, kids today, KKK, Kure, Lando Calrissian, liberalism, literature, Loch Ness Monster, Mark Z. Danielewski, Marquette, Marvell, mass shootings, MCU, Miami, Milwaukee, misogyny, modernity, Monument Ave, my scholarly empire, my teaching empire, Nabokov, narrative, NATO, Nazis, neoliberalism, New York, non-academic jobs, NRA, NSA, Octavia Butler, over-educated literary theory PhDs, Papa John, parenting, Parkland, pedagogy, police brutality, police corruption, police state, politics, race, racism, rape culture, Reality Winner, relationships, Richmond, Russias, SAT, science, science fiction, Scotland, Scott Walker, self-help, sexism, sexual abuse, SFRA, Shakespeare, Silicon Valley, small-town corruption, soccer, social democracy, socialism, someone in the club tonight is stealing my ideas, special issues, spiders, sports, Star Wars, Supreme Court, surveillance society, swimming, taxis, teaching, technoleviathan, teenagers, tenure, Thailand, the Constitution, the courts, the deaf, the disappeared, The Handmaid's Tale, the law, theme parks, totalitarianism, Uber, war huh good god y'all what is it good for? absolutely nothing say it again, wearing a tie, weird science, Wes Anderson, white nationalism, white supremacism, WHO, Wisconsin, World Cup, World War III, writing, Zoey
Finely Curated May Fifth Links (Aged to Perfection)
* I’ve had a couple of short pieces of writing go up in the last few weeks: a piece on the often overlooked epilogue to The Handmaid’s Tale at LARB and a followup piece on Infinity War and franchise time at frieze.
* Maybe my favorite Infinity War take. Bady! Nussbuam! Loofburouw! Scalzi! Dreyfuss! We’re the good guys, right? Pop Culture Won’t Save Us. How one movie genre became the guiding myth of neoliberalism.
* There’s also been a couple other good pieces lately pushing on whether Handmaid’s Tale really should have had a second season.
* Two from Jaimee: “Frosted Palm” and “The Books in the Bushes.”
* The 2018 Marquette Literary Review is up. And so is SFRA Review #324!
* CFP: An Anthology on Carrie Fisher.
* CFP: Special Double Issue: Disability Studies and Ecocriticism.
* Twitter thread: we already live in a boring dystopia.
* Most-Liked Tweets of Famous Poets.
* Fred Moten in the New Yorker!
* Janelle Monáe in Rolling Stone!
* Maybe the best “there’s just one story and we tell it over and over” I’ve ever done.
* Channeling the anti-Trump #Resistance, a slew of recent books seeks to reduce democracy to a defense of political “norms.” But overcoming today’s crisis will take more political imagination.
* Three Identical Strangers, a dark documentary about identical triplets who were separated-at-birth. Amazing story. I wish I’d waited for the movie before Googling it.
* How a tiny protest at the U. of Nebraska turned into a proxy war for the future of campus politics.
* Just in time for my summer syllabi: Junot Diaz #MeToo Accusations Surface. No Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018.
* Michigan State. Michigan State. Michigan Goddamn State. SIU. Columbia. University of Illinois at Chicago. George Mason. UNC. And in some rare good news: Oregon.
* There is no campus free speech crisis: a look at the evidence.
* “The root cause of the F.B.I. investigation are the N.C.A.A. rules limiting — actually, prohibiting — compensation for players,” he said. “And none of the recommendations speak to them — none of them.”
* What does a non-academic job search look like for a rhet/comp PhD student? I put compiled some numbers to illustrate my experience over the last 3 months.
* What Jack Kirby proposed for the plaques on the Pioneer space probes.
* Infiltration into left-wing groups is just the sharp edge of an entire armory of political policing.
* Chicago’s drinking water is full of lead, report says. Newark Water Tests Show High Lead Levels, Prompting Threat of Lawsuit.
* Vaccine refusal is contagious — and there’s no cure.
* What’s Wrong With Growing Blobs of Brain Tissue?
* One of the most worrisome predictions about climate change may be coming true.
* The arc of history is long, but Somehow, Jaxxon the Ridiculous Green Space Rabbit Has Made It to the New Star Wars Canon.
* How a Genealogy Site Led to the Front Door of the Golden State Killer Suspect.
* New Documents Reveal How ICE Mines Local Police Databases Across the Country.
* Is the US Border Patrol Committing Crimes Against Humanity?
5. But these theories do not have any explanatory power regarding why the vote broke down the way it did demographically. Only one broad demographic seemed to be receptive to the kind of campaign that Trump ran on: white people. https://t.co/sdoOzrSVTL pic.twitter.com/UHEM9e3A0W
— Ethan Grey (@_EthanGrey) April 26, 2018
* LEGO crime boss busted in Portland. No jury in the world would convict him.
* $5,751.
* Lessons From Rust-Belt Cities That Kept Their Sheen.
* The Mighty Thor’s conclusion signals the end of a Marvel Comics era. What an odd comic this was. And meanwhile: This is the Dark Side of the Rainbow of our time.
* Enjoy a tarantula burger in Durham, North Carolina.
* In New Jersey, the top lobbying spenders are from the following industries: energy, healthcare, insurance, and… balloons.
* A Lynching Memorial Is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It.
* eFterlife. Batmen and Robins. Natural selection. Good grief.
* ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Interactive Movie in the Works at Fox.
* Two years old, but who cares: “It smelled like death”: An oral history of the Double Dare obstacle course.
* And sure, let’s make ice-nine, at this point why not.
Written by gerrycanavan
May 5, 2018 at 10:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #TheReistance, academia, Afrofuturism, afterlife, alt-ac, America, animal rights, artificial intelligence, Avengers, Batman, Black Panther, brains, canonicity, Carrie Fisher, Cat's Cradle, CFPs, Chewbacca, Chicago, class struggle, climate change, college sports, Columbia, comics, deportation, disability studies, DNA, documentary, Donald Trump, Double Dare, Durham, dystopia, ecocriticism, escapism, fantasy, Fred Moten, free speech, George Mason University, good grief, Han Solo, happiness, health care, How the University Works, ice, ice-nine, immigration, Infinity War, Jack Kirby, Jaimee, Janelle Monae, Jaxxon the Space Rabbit, Junot Díaz, kids today, lead, LEGO, lobbying, lynching, mad science, Marquette, Marquette Literary Review, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, MCU, Michigan State, Milwaukee, misogyny, museums, my media empire, natural selection, NCAA, Nebraska, neoliberalism, New Jersey, Newark, Nickelodeon, Nobel Prize, North Carolina, over-educated literary theory PhDs, Peanuts, pedagogy, Pioneer 10, poetry, police state, police violence, politics, Portland, race, racism, rhetoric and composition, Robin, Rust Belt, Satanism, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science fiction, second seasons, sexism, SFRA, Snoopy, Southern Illinois University, Springsteen, Star Wars, surveillance society, tarantula burgers, teaching, teaching evaluations, The Handmaid's Tale, the Midwest, there's just one story and we tell it over and over, Thor, Triplets, true crime, twins, UNC, University of Illinois at Chicago, university of Nebraska, University of Oregon, vaccines, vegetarianism, Vonnegut, Wakanda, Wakandacon, water, Westworld, whiteness, writing
Weekend Links! Tabs Bankruptcy! All Links Must Go!
* Podcast: What is Irish Science Fiction? I’d also recommend a few new podcasts, Off Book (weekly improvised musical) and What Trump Can Teach Us about Con Law.
* Octavia Butler’s Prescient Vision of a Zealot Elected to “Make America Great Again.”
* Researchers Just Launched a Prototype of Humanity’s First ‘Interstellar Spacecraft.’
* ‘Make It So’: Star Trek and Its Debt to Revolutionary Socialism.
* Star Trek: Discovery is the first Trek TV series in over 15 years. Here’s everything we know.
* Republicans don’t trust higher ed. That’s a problem for liberal academics.
* Three years after Steven Salaita lost a promised tenured position in American Indian studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign over the tone of his anti-Israel tweets, he’s leaving academe.
* How a New Field Could Help Save the Humanities.
* Why the Myth of Meritocracy Hurts Kids of Color.
* They’re still fighting at Hypatia.
* “If There’s an Organized Outrage Machine, We Need an Organized Response.” Recovering academic freedom in an age of social media mobbing.
* Any parent could have told you this: Ravens plan better than four-year-olds.
* How to raise an optimistic human in a pessimistic world.
* Among the dead was a so-called Dreamer, a migrant who had been brought to the United States as a young child. Frank Guisseppe Fuentes, 20, spent much of his life in the U.S. and had crossed the border in an attempt to reunite with family members living in Maryland after he was deported to Guatemala City, Jose Barillas, the Guatemalan consul general in Houston, told Univision. The Mothers Being Deported by Trump. Slain girl’s father, sister denied visas, miss her funeral. A Veteran Agent Speaks Out.
* New Jersey raised its smoking age to 21. The change will likely save lives. Honestly, just ban them outright, and soda too.
* Wisconsin is paying as much as $1 million per job, which will carry an average salary of $54,000. I’ve thought about it, and I think I’d rather have the iPhone.
* The Company Behind Many Surprise Emergency Room Bills.
* Don’t let your employer microchip you! Ever!
* A 21st-century form of indentured servitude has already penetrated deep into the American heartland.
* Woman turns home into museum after getting sick of black women being ignored by the art world.
* When there was a Lyme disease vaccine.
* Snopes Faces an Ugly Legal Battle.
* North Dakota’s Norway Experiment.
* Reverse Robin Hood: The Historical Scam of Global Development.
* Dungeons and Dragons in America’s dungeons. Dungeons and Dragons and the Left.
* Hemingway just got beat by four words.
* Why there’s no such thing as a gifted child.
* The Sinclair Revolution Will Be Televised. It’ll Just Have Low Production Values.
* 110/111.
* The next Matt Groening series isn’t just a Futurama-but-fantasy but a joke Futurama already did. But fine I’ll give it a chance.
* A definitive mapping of the decline of The Simpsons. It’s just math, folks.
* The attack on Poland’s judicial independence goes deeper than you may think. Here are 5 things to know. Dodged that bullet. Coming soon to a collapsing empire near you!
* On 500 episodes of Comedy Bang Bang.
* When Pokémon Go defeated Milwaukee County.
* Et tu, Roomba? I trusted you.
* The World May Have Less Time to Address Climate Change Than Scientists Thought.
* And yet there’s more dicks around than ever before.
* The knife’s edge between utopia and apocalypse: First Human Embryos Edited in U.S.
* #NotAllTVIsDarkAndFullOfTerrors.
* And July 30 can’t come fast enough.
And because Trump is a nightmare from which none of us will ever awake:
* We’re Approaching a Major Turning Point in Trump-Era Pop Culture.
* The Scariest Nuclear Threat Is Coming From Inside the White House.
After Pyle’s list of questions wound up on Bloomberg News, the Trump administration disavowed them, but a signal had been sent: We don’t want you to help us understand; we want to find out who you are and punish you. Pyle vanished from the scene. According to a former Obama official, he was replaced by a handful of young ideologues who called themselves “the Beachhead Team.” “They mainly ran around the building insulting people,” says a former Obama official. “There was a mentality that everything that government does is stupid and bad and the people are stupid and bad,” says another. They allegedly demanded to know the names and salaries of the 20 highest-paid people in the national-science labs overseen by the D.O.E. They’d eventually, according to former D.O.E. staffers, delete the contact list with the e-mail addresses of all D.O.E.-funded scientists—apparently to make it more difficult for them to communicate with one another. “These people were insane,” says the former D.O.E. staffer. “They weren’t prepared. They didn’t know what they were doing.”
* Turtles all the way down: Scott Pruitt wants to hijack the peer-review process to push bad climate science.
At the Pentagon, the first of the three tweets raised fears that the president was getting ready to announce strikes on North Korea or some other military action. Many said they were left in suspense for nine minutes, the time between the first and second tweet. Only after the second tweet did military officials receive the news the president was announcing a personnel change on Twitter.
* This guy is running communications now! Come on! COME ON!
* A Constitutional Crisis Is Inevitable. It’s not too early, or too nutty, to discuss grounds for impeachment. This presidency can’t be saved. A Trump Tower of Absolute Folly. Hot mic. 1 in 4. On the Brink of a Constitutional Crisis, the Nation Goes Numb.
* Trump Finds Reason for the U.S. to Remain in Afghanistan: Minerals. Sixteen years. We’ve long lost even the pretense that there is a rational reason for this.
* 64 years after Korean War, North still digging up bombs.
* William Regnery II, a man who inherited millions but struggled in business, tried for 15 years to ignite a racist political movement — and failed. Then an unforeseen phenomenon named Donald Trump gave legitimacy to what Regnery had seeded long before: the alt-right. Now, the press-shy white separatist breaks his silence.
* How Breitbart Media’s Disinformation Created the Paranoid, Fact-Averse Nation That Elected Trump.
* This is the tradition Ryan Alford sets himself against in Permanent State of Emergency: Unchecked Executive Power and the Demise of the Rule of Law. It is from a position of deliberate disinterest in institutional personality, particularly presidential personality, that Alford builds his account of the lawlessness of US counterterrorism efforts since the 9/11 attacks and charts our country’s official passage across the “threshold between an imperial presidency and an elective dictatorship.”
* What if Trump Ordered a Nuclear Strike on China? I’d Comply, Says Admiral. Not great, Bob!
* When you’ve lost the Boy Scouts.
* Who Is Killing American Women? Their Husbands And Boyfriends, CDC Confirms.
* Trump administration is sitting on tens of thousands of student debt forgiveness claims.
* Our Long, Troubling History of Sterilizing the Incarcerated.
* RIP CBO.
* There’s nothing he can’t ruin.
* How to put Trump on Mount Rushmore, something he’s never even thought about.
* #Actually Stubbs’s tenure as mayor was deeply problematic.
* John McCain Just Proved He Is the Senate’s Biggest Fraud (Again). Your enemies are human too.
The fact that John McCain would get up off his deathbed to participate in this cruel farce does not make him a hero, it makes him a bad person. He had a perfectly valid excuse to skip the vote. Indeed, he had a perfectly valid excuse to resign his senate seat altogether and wash his hands of this mess. Those would both be understandable human actions. What he chose to do instead was completely gratuitous and cruel, which is comprehensible only as an attempt to bask in the media’s adoration one last time. That motivation is human, and that’s what makes it morally blameworthy. If he were a mystical creature who fed on the praise of journalists, then we could write it off as a survival instinct. Since he is a human being with human moral agency, we are entitled to our equally human moral judgment. And in my judgment, which is my right as a human being, John McCain is an evil man and anyone who is trying to use his unfortunate medical condition to distract from that fact is a fool at best and a fellow villain at worst.
* Chaos. Chaos. Chaos. Chaos. Chaos. Chaos. Chaos.
* Understanding skinny repeal.
* Don’t forget: they win because the system is rigged in their favor. Not that they don’t get a lot of help.
* And yet! Sometimes they don’t. Good for Collins, Murkowski, McCain, and literally every Democrat in Congress, and remember that Trumpcare isn’t truly dead (no matter how many bullets you put in it) until Democrats get a veto point back…
Written by gerrycanavan
July 28, 2017 at 9:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with academia, academic freedom, academic writing, actually existing media bias, brains, capitalism, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, class struggle, Comedy Bang Bang, concussions, cultural preservation, debt, delicious Coca-Cola, deportation, Donald Trump, Dungeons and Dragons, education, emergency rooms, football, Foxconn, Futurama, gifted children, globally, health care, Hemingway, high fives, How the University Works, immigration, improv, indentured servitude, Ireland, kids, Lyme disease, Matt Groening, meritocracy, Milwaukee, mobbing, museums, musicals, NASA, neoliberalism, New Jersey, North Dakota, Norway, Octavia Butler, optimism, outer space, Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, parenting, pessimism, philosophy, podcasts, Pokémon Go, Poland, politics, prison, prison-industrial complex, ravens, Republicans, robots, Roomba, science fiction, short stories, Sinclair, smoking, social media, socialism, soda, Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery, Steven Salaita, television, the Constitution, the courts, the humanities, the law, the Left, The Simpsons, trans* issues, vaccines, Wisconsin, work
Sunday Night Closing All My Tabs
* My review of Kim Stanley Robinson’s (excellent!) New York 2140 is finally up at the Los Angeles Review of Books: Utopia in the Time of Trump.
Where most contemporary histories of the future imagine climate change as either an annoying irritation or else the end of history — the disaster that will end civilization — in New York 2140 Robinson cuts more of a middle path. Climate change does indeed prove utterly catastrophic in this novel, laying waste to the coastal cities where a startling percentage of the world’s population currently lives, and devastating a huge amount of infrastructure and fixed capital, costing trillions of dollars — but humans are incredibly versatile problem-solvers, and we adapt. Technical solutions like sea walls and skybridges are really only the start of what would be necessary in a flooded Manhattan. Think of the immense social changes, the legal, economic, and architectural structures that would need to be innovated when huge areas of major cities are permanently underwater, or indeed become part of the intertidal zone. Even by 2140, nearly 100 years after the start of the crisis, the long work of retrofitting civilization to rising sea levels goes on, and not all of it is even that unhappy; it’s no secret that the capitalists use the same phrase to denote both crisis and opportunity, creative destruction….
* Don’t worry, kids, it’s just a story.
* More Hugos lists! Octavia E. Butler is actually listed on a few of these! Keeping my silly Hugo dream alive.
* Also at LARB: A Mark Fisher memoriam and a review of his last book, The Weird and the Eerie.
* Getting ready for Marquette’s big Buffy at 20 conference: Every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ranked. Buffy the Vampire Slayer video games, ranked from best to worst. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a feminist parable for everyone – including Anthony Stewart Head. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the greatest show in the history of television. The Enduring Legacy. Genocide of the Vampires. How Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Most Hated Season Became Its Most Important. On “The Body.” Twenty years later, the world needs Buffy more than ever. A few more at MeFi. And from the archives, David Graeber.
* CFPs at Science Fiction Studies on climate change fiction and Frankenstein.
* And don’t sleep on the CFP for SFRA 2017, due at the end of the month.
* Marquette: a university on the… grow?
* Want To Know About Racially Motivated Policing? Ask Literally Any Person of Color in Milwaukee.
* Data Draws Link Between Metro Milwaukee’s Segregation and Poverty.
* 50th Anniversary of the Milwaukee Fair Housing Marches.
* #4.
* This isn’t a complete picture — it is too nostalgic for a lost age of exclusion, and misses completely the despair caused by the total collapse of the profession — but all the same I found it a powerful critique of the university today: Our Hallways Are Too Quiet.
* Probably the best piece of art criticism ever written: Appraising the Brady Bunch’s Art Collection.
* More Lovercraft from the great Ali Sperling! H.P. Lovecraft’s Weird Body.
* The New York Times reviews Lower Ed by the great Tressie McMillan Cottom.
* Sold! Wild New Theory Suggests Radio Bursts Beyond Our Galaxy Are Powering Alien Starships.
* Think Twice About Escaping Earth to an Exoplanet. Trappist-1 is already ruined.
* On zeitgeist: Ozymandias statue found in mud.
* What will the 25th Century Call the 21st?
* The Handmaid’s Tale in the Age of Trump.
* A Women’s Strike Syllabus. And another.
* U.S. Colleges: Where Does The Money Go?
* Rutgers also diverted $11 million in student fees and $17.1 million from its general fund to cover the athletic shortfall. The average undergraduate now pays more than $300 in activities fees exclusively for the university’s N.C.A.A. teams.
* Gotta spend money to explain why you aren’t spending money.
* Bodies on the Gears at Middleburg. And from the right: Middlebury Reckons With a Protest Gone Wrong. From Mother Jones to Middlebury: The Problem and Promise of Political Violence in Trump’s America.
* Ideology of the March for Science.
* Are the Democrats totally screwed? The Democratic Party Seems to Have No Earthly Idea Why It Is So Damn Unpopular. Outsmarted: on the Liberal Cult of the Cognitive Elite. There Really Was A Liberal Media Bubble. The SEIU at the end of the world.
* Trump can’t even do a standard thing like firing all the US Attorneys without turning it into a train wreck. But here’s how he can turn it around. Why the Russia Story Is a Minefield for Democrats and the Media. Descent into Liberalism. Fantasizing about President Pence. Of no fixed address. Here’s How Much ‘Trumpcare’ Fucks You, Based On How You Get Your Insurance Now. Who wins and who loses under the Republicans’ health care plan. A Trumpcare flashback. Truly, freedom isn’t free.
Then, before you know it, the Wall Street Journal is an oracle of truth. You’re rooting for Cold War II. The FBI is your BFF. You’re a Democrat.
* This is so evil: Bill Would Let Employers Demand Workers’ Genetic Tests.
* In the future, everyone will publicly beg for health care for 15 minutes.
* If you want a vision of the future.
* The Perils of the New, Shiny George W. Bush.
* The Revolutionary Force of Stupidity: A Conversation with Matt Taibbi.
* Enemies of the People: How hatred of the masses bridges our partisan divide.
* Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is heaven — for spies!
* The Great Lakes Are Sicker Than You Think. Editorial: Don’t slash funding for the Great Lakes.
* Towards a Unified Theory of Why Men Send Dick Pics. Obviously, more research is required.
* Neonazis! I hate these guys. Indiana Jones and the Okay Fine We’ll Try Again.
* Why Dentistry Is Separate From Medicine.
* Twenty-First Century Headlines: Radioactive Boars in Fukushima Thwart Residents’ Plans to Return Home.
* Brain activity recorded as much as 10 minutes after death.
* West Virginia county sues drug distributors over opioid crisis.
* Today in the massive screwed-uppedness of American democracy.
Los Angeles County (red) has a larger population than each of the 43 individual states shown in blue. #mapping #geography pic.twitter.com/hBbPFWxwzB
— Mark Abraham (@urbandata) March 1, 2017
* George Republicans Pass Mid-Decade Re-Gerrymander Just in Case.
* Purple America Has All But Disappeared.
* Every semi-competent male hero has a more talented female sidekick. Why isn’t she the hero instead?
* Star Trek: Discovery announces exciting “the captain is probably evil and in any event will die at the end of the season” arc.
* Knives out for Marvel: they finally made a mistake big enough to be noticed. More from Noah Berlatsky.
* Study: Hillary Clinton’s TV ads were almost entirely policy-free.
* Officials with Alberta’s environment agency inspected the water lines on Tuesday afternoon and proclaimed it safe, while the town completed the required repairs by the end of day. Town’s Water Turns Pink In Horrifying Ghostbusters Throwback.
* Requiem for a Dil. We’re Looking for People with Management Potential. An Experiment to Determine if Rats Can Be Made to Hate Thanksgiving. It’s Not So Bad. Sad Truths: Mythological Creatures Edition. I wish human beings were as peaceful and loving as bonobos. We all have our struggles.
* Silicon Valley’s Secretive Alt-Right Followers.
* Review is back, thank heaven.
* Nostalgia for the childhood you never had: The Japanese opening for the X-Men Animated Series.
* Inside the cruellest RollerCoaster Tycoon park ever created.
* The arc of history is long, but Rookie Doctors Will Soon Be Allowed To Work Up To 28 Hours Straight.
* Aliens, Antisemitism, and Academia.
* “King Kong” and American Cultural History.
* 20 million at risk of starvation in world’s largest crisis since 1945, UN says.
* Interesting: The New Avatar Theme Park Is a Giant Spoiler.
In an interview conducted inside the park, Cameron said that the park is set in a timeline after the five movies. A time when the war between humans and Na’vi is over. A time when the Na’vi have begun to welcome humans onto their planet with opens arms.
* How the 20,699-word iTunes T&Cs became this year’s hottest graphic novel.
* Should California lower its voting age to 17? Yes.
* And dibs on the screenplay: Right now, in a vault controlled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, there sits a 752-pound emerald with no rightful owner. This gem is the size of a minifridge. It weighs as much as two sumo wrestlers. Estimates of its worth range from a hundred bucks to $925 million. Over the past 10 years, four lawsuits have been filed over the Bahia emerald. Fourteen individuals or entities, plus the nation of Brazil, have claimed the rock is theirs. A house burned down. Three people filed for bankruptcy. One man alleges having been kidnapped and held hostage. Many of the men involved say that the emerald is hellspawn but they also can’t let it go.
Written by gerrycanavan
March 12, 2017 at 4:19 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #BlackLivesMatter, a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies, abolish men, abolition, academia, academic freedom, actually existing media bias, administrative blight, advertising, Africa, Alberta, aliens, alt-right, America, Andy Daly, Angel, anniversaries, anti-Semitism, art, austerity, Avatar, Berkeley, bonobos, brains, Buffy, Bush, California, Canada, capitalist realism, CEOs, CFPs, Charles Murray, CIA, cities, class, class struggle, climate change, cloning, college, college football, college sports, comedy, comics, conferences, crowdfunding, David Graeber, death, democracy, Democrats, dentistry, despair, dibs on the screenplay, dick pics, Dilbert, drugs, ecology, emeralds, espionage, famine, FBI, feminism, Fermi paradox, for-profit schools, Frankenstein, free speech, Fukushima, futurity, games, gems, general election 2016, general strike, Georgia, gerrymandering, GINA, grading, graphic novels, Great Lakes, Hamilton, Harry Potter, health care, Hillary Clinton, How the University Works, Hugo awards, ideology, Indiana Jones, Iron Fist, ITunes, James Cameron, Japan, JCCs, Joss Whedon, Kim Stanley Robinson, King Kong, liberalism, look upon my works ye mighty and despair, Los Angeles County, Lovecraft, Lower Ed, maps, Mar-a-Lago, Mark Fisher, Marquette, Marvel, Mary Shelley, medicine, men, Middlebury, Mike Pence, Milwaukee, Milwaukee Fair Housing Marches, mortality, my media empire, my pedagogical empire, Nazis, NCAA, neoliberalism, New York, New York 2140, NFL, nuclear power, nuclearity, Octavia Butler, opioids, outer space, Ozymandias, pedagogy, police brutality, police state, police violence, politics, polls, pollution, poverty, pre symptomatic genetic testing, prison, prison-industrial complex, privacy, protest, psychedelic drugs, race, racism, radiation, Republicans, resistance, Review, Russia, Rutgers, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science, science fiction, science fiction studies, scientific racism, segregation, SEIU, sex, SFRA, Siberia, Silicon Valley, standardizd testing, Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery, starvation, stories, strikes, stupidity, teaching, terms and conditions, terrorism, The Bell Curve, The Brady Bunch, the eerie, The March for Science, the weird, Trappist-1, Tressie McMillan Cottom, true crime, Trump, Trumpcare, unions, universities, US attorneys, Utopia, Venn diagrams, violence, voting, water, West Virginia, white supremacy, women, woolly mammoths, X-Men, zeitgeist
Christmascism
* I’ve started something new and a little bit experimental at Marquette this month: I’m teaching one of the courses in the pilot January session. Mine is a departure for me in a number of ways; in addition to being a very abbreviated, intensive session, it is also entirely online and links literary study with short-story writing in a way our intro classes typically haven’t. Three days in, I’m enjoying the experience a lot! Designing and producing the course materials over the fall was a hectic experience, to say the least, but having all the material ready and up front on launch day certainly makes the day-by-day operation of the course easier.
* Elsewhere on the Marquette beat: the university has recently purchased a first edition of The Hobbit. I’ve asked to teach my Tolkien class again in the fall, so maybe they’ll let me look at it, if not touch it…
* Also coming this fall: The five stages of fascism. This piece from the Post has filled me with renewed dread that Trump is actually going to be very good at this. He seems to understand exactly how superficial and how fundamentally stupid the American public sphere has become. I don’t think he’ll have any trouble manipulating the press exactly how he wants to.
The notion that Trump's voters will actually care about what he does as president strikes me as embarrassingly old-fashioned
— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) December 21, 2016
* I can’t wait to find out who wins the 2016 election.
* I loved this piece on the Reddit community that is sure Sinbad played a genie in a movie in the 1990s. I asked Jaimee afterwards if she remembered the film; she remembered it immediately and is now furious with me. Of course it reminded me of my own benighted quest to find the TV show intro theme where someone opens a door and gets a paint roller over their head. Yes, you remember that one too, no, it doesn’t exist…
* Putin, Comey, Putin, Comey: Almost all the US jobs created since 2005 are temporary. And it’s likely to get a whole lot worse very soon.
* Jonathan Lethem and Kim Stanley Robinson talk Philip K. Dick.
* Wild! Google sued over policies ‘barring employees from writing novels.’
* Still more on the original ending of Rogue One, with confirmation that it was very different.
* Food, floods, flu, and the Doomsday Vault.
* Strange days: Brianna Wu says she’s running for Congress.
* ‘Jeopardy!’ contestant didn’t live to see her winning streak on TV.
* Playtesting the coming cashless dystopia in India.
* I Was All Set to Become the Most Popular Guy in the Cancer Ward. Then I Met My Nemesis: Ben.
* And you can’t argue with science: Apparently cat owners might be more into bondage and BDSM than everyone else.
Written by gerrycanavan
December 21, 2016 at 8:25 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with America, apocalypse, Barack Obama, BDSM, bondage, brains, Brianna Wu, cancer, cars, cashless society, cats, class struggle, climate change, collective hallucinations, Democrats, Donald Trump, Doomsday Vault, dystopia, ecology, false memories, fascism, film, general election 2016, Google, Hillary Clinton, India, J-terms, Jeopardy, jobs, labor, Lord of the Rings, maps, Marquette, now my story can be told, pedagogy, politics, Rogue One, science fiction, self-driving cars, sex, Shazam, Silicon Valley, Sinbad, slurs, spectacle, Star Wars, syllabi, teaching, technology, The Apprentice, The Hobbit, Tolkien, Tom Arnold, William Gibson, writing
Week-Old Links at Two-Weeks-Old-Link Prices
* The San Bernardino mystery. Disband MSNBC. The story of the first mass murder in U.S. history. From the archives: The Making of a Rampage Murderer: What the Brutal Life of Oakland Shooter One L. Goh Says About America. So There’s Just Been a Mass Shooting. The Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook. Your tweets are not helping.
* The story, called “The Princess Steel,” was discovered by scholars Adrienne Brown and Britt Rusert, who write about it in the new issue of the Modern Language Association journal. We May Have Just Found W.E.B. Du Bois’ Earliest Science Fiction Story.
* Crank watch: What No One Is Telling You About Mark Zuckerberg Donating 99% Of His Fortune To “Charity.” The Philanthropy Hustle.
* Tickets go on sale Friday, Dec. 11.
* Elsewhere on the local beat: The Transformation of the Milwaukee Art Museum.
* I teach practical, marketable skills that will serve my students their entire lives.
* Four tough things universities should do to rein in costs. Four tough things columnists should do before writing about universities.
* Are most academic papers really worthless? Don’t trust this worthless statistic.
* College athletic departments are paying themselves to lose money.
* The future is a nightmare, and Purdue is ready.
* Self-driving cars will be the worst. Hopefully this particular problem is mostly solved by the elimination of private car ownership altogether.
* Catholic University Declares 1st Amendment Right To Ignore Catholicism.
* Sports Corner: Stephen Curry Is The Revolution.
* Meanwhile it is stunning to have my prejudices confirmed so wholly: New Study Finds ‘Surprising’ Correlation Between Degenerative Brain Disease And Amateur Athletics.
* Cruel Optimism and the NFL, or, Life in the Factory of Sadness.
* Let us be precise: Donald Trump Is Not a Liar.
* Leaked Documents Show Alabama Police Department Planted Drugs On Black Men For Years. Meanwhile, in Chicago. UPDATE: There may be less to that Alabama story than meets the eye.
* Spoiler Alerts: Three Books on Trash.
* The 24 Most Embarrassing Dungeons & Dragons Character Classes.
* Assuming a round figure of two and a half billion years of beak-sharpening, and assuming (a BIG assumption, to be sure) about three days per iteration of the Doctor, you can figure, based on a solar year of 365.25 days, that there have been approximately three hundred and four billion, three hundred and seventy-five million and twelve Doctors.
* And speaking of the Doctor: I’m not even sure who #2 would be.
* Behold the Jessica Jones backlash.
* Study suggests Type 2 diabetes can be cured by weight loss — specifically the loss of half a gram of fat from the pancreas.
* What they give with one hand they take with the other: Research Points To Mental Health Risks Associated With Meatless Diet.
* This is neat: The Third Amendment to the Constitution — the one that bans the quartering of soldiers in homes without the owner’s consent — is sort of the Pete Best of the early American legislative experiment. While the other amendments have had all sorts of play at the highest levels of legal rulings, there has never been a Supreme Court decision primarily based on the Third Amendment. Clearly the Founders had a goal, wrote it down, and we haven’t had too many questions about the matter since. Nice work, Founders. Anyway, there’s an idea bubbling among legal theorists to use the Third Amendment to counteract domestic spying from the NSA — a branch of the Department of Defense — and while it may not be 100 percent there, it’s interesting.
* Our bad: U.S. Holds Yemeni Man at Guantanamo Bay for 13 Years in Case of Mistaken Identity.
* Starting work before 10am isn’t just soul crushing, this scientist says it’s equivalent to torture.
* Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty.
* Of One and the Other: Humans and Animals.
* Know your branches of economics.
* State sues prisoners to pay for their room, board.
* “This is the best declining mall review I’ve ever read.”
* Teach the controversy: Will Our Descendants Survive the Destruction of the Universe?
* Magnifique! In Photos: Anarchists Clash With Riot Police During Climate Summit Protest in Paris.
* When the Onion goes dark, there’s still no one better: Frustrated Gunman Can’t Believe How Far He Has To Drive To Find Nearest Planned Parenthood Clinic.
* Female-Authors-Only Philosophy of Science Syllabus.
* There’s no such thing as a male or female brain, study finds.
* Florida Woman’s Car Turned Her in for a Hit-and-Run.
* Mom Who Overslept While Son Walked to School Could Get 10 Years in Prison.
* General election watch: Democrats are fiercely committed to the proposition of nominating a perhaps fatally compromised candidate whom basically no one likes. And from Amber A’Lee Frost: My Kind of Misogyny. Wheeeeeeeeee!
* Philosophy Corner: Is there a principled difference between having a gun and just having a button that when pressed kills the person standing in front of you?
* Was Star Wars’ Empire on the brink of financial ruin?
* This company believes it can resurrect humans in the next 30 years.
* Kill the Santa Claus in your head.
* From Climate Crisis to Solar Communism. World’s Most Vulnerable Islands Are Hoping Paris Will Bring an Impossible Climate Miracle. India Holds the Planet’s Fate in Its Hands. That’s Great News.
* Def Sec Carter To Open All Combat Jobs To Women In Historic Change.
* How to Be an Anticapitalist Today.
* Soviet erotic alphabet picture book, 1931.
* There but for the grace of God go we: Man arrested with 51 turtles in his pants.
* And of course you had me at Rare 40-Year-Old Star Trek Comics Are Finally Being Released In the U.S.
Written by gerrycanavan
December 5, 2015 at 9:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with abortion, academia, academic journals, academic writing, actually existing media bias, Afrofuturism, alphabets, America, anarchism, animals, anticapitalism, apocalypse, art, basketball, Bill of Rights, brain damage, brains, breaking news, Bruce Springsteen, bullshit, cars, Catholicism, charity, Chicago, CIA, climate change, clowns, college sports, comics, counterintelligence, cruel optimism, Democratic primary 2016, diabetes, Doctor Who, domestic surveillance, Donald Trump, Dungeons & Dragons, ecology, economics, education, Episode 7, Facebook, fan fiction, feminism, games, Guantánamo, guns, Hillary Clinton, history, How the University Works, human capital contracts, hustles, India, Jessica Jones, juries, jury duty, kids today, labor, lies and lying liars, Lord of the Rings, malls, Mark Zuckerberg, Marvel, mass murder, medicine, Milwaukee, misogyny, MSNBC, museums, my scholarly empire, NCAA, Netflix, NFL, NSA, Oakland, our brains work in interesting but ultimately depressing ways, Ozymandias, parenting, Paris, pedagogy, philanthropy, philosophy, philosophy of science, photography, Planned Parenthood, police corruption, porn, Porn Studies, poverty, prison-industrial complex, protest, Purdue, race, rape, religion, resurrection, rising sea levels, ruins, San Bernardino, Santa Claus, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, scams, science fiction, sleep, solar power, Soviet Union, sports, Star Trek, Star Wars, Stephen Curry, surveillance society, teach the controversy, teaching, television, terrorism, the Constitution, the cosmos, the courts, The Force Awakens, the humanities, the law, The Onion, there but for the grace of God, Third Amendment, TIAA-CREF, Tolkien, torture, trans* issues, trash, true crime, turtles, Twitter, vegetarianism, Vulcan, W.E.B. DuBois, war on terror, Wisconsin, Won't somebody think of the children?, work
Wednesday Links!
* As yet unmade series of Star Trek is shit, say Trekkies. I’m excited but trepidatious — and I think the anthology model might really be the way to go.
* As yet unmade Greatest American Hero reboot is shit.
* All six editors and all 31 editorial board members of Lingua, one of the top journals in linguistics, last week resigned to protest Elsevier’s policies on pricing and its refusal to convert the journal to an open-access publication that would be free online.
* Accelerationism Without Accelerationism.
* The Man Who Brought Zombies to America.
* John Boehner: ‘God told me’ Paul Ryan becoming Speaker was part of his divine plan. Truly, he moves in mysterious ways.
* Entering the “living parody” stage of the campus culture debate: Amid controversy, ‘Stonewall’ screening postponed.
* I’ve seen this movie, and it doesn’t end well: Man finds his doppelganger sitting in his seat on a flight.
* This one either: The Melting Antarctic Ice Sheet Is Heading Towards Irreversible Collapse.
* Why does Facebook want the machines to win at Go?
* The Idea of a “Male Brain” and a “Female Brain” Is Likely a Myth.
* The arc of history is long, but Disney May Be Officially Retiring Slave Leia From All ‘Star Wars’ Merchandise.
* And you had me at hello: famous statues reimagined as action figures.
Written by gerrycanavan
November 4, 2015 at 7:28 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with AAUP, academia, academic freedom, academic publishing, accelerationism, action figures, adjuncts, America, Antarctica, anthology series, apocalypse, brains, climate change, Colorado College, computers, cosmology, Disney, dopplegangers, Facebook, fandom, film, games, gender, Go, God, Greatest American Hero, How the University Works, ice sheet collapse, John Boehner, many worlds and alternate universes, my particular demographic, Open Access, Paul Ryan, Princess Leia, quantum physics, science, science fiction, sex, social media, Star Trek, Star Wars, statues, Steve Shaviro, Stonewall, television, tenure, toys, Twilight Zone, Twitter, zombies
Thursday Night Links!
* Did you know Jaimee Hills’s incredible How to Avoid Speaking has started to ship? Buy it today! Hear her on Lake Effect!
* Presenting the MOSF Journal of Science Fiction.
* The Founders misread history and established a dysfunctional system of government. A case for a little less reverence. Will “decoherence” be the doom of American democracy?
* The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration. Race Is Always the Issue.
* The False Science of Cryonics: What the nervous system of the roundworm tells us about freezing brains and reanimating human minds. A Dying Young Woman’s Hope.
* The Caine Prize after “emergence.”
* The Nine Dumbest Things in the Rutgers Report on Kyle Flood.
* The Internet after Ad Blocking. Welcome to hell: Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook and the slow death of the web.
* Inside the Brains of Happily Married Couples.
* Friends don’t let friends write clickbait confessionals.
* The feminist think piece industrial complex.
* Twilight of the Elites and the rise of a global left. Even Yglesias is on board!
* We enter into something of a contract as a faculty member: we trade income for autonomy and security. If we do not use the latter, we enter a fool’s bargain. This is why I stay, and why being ready to quit is an important part of staying.
* Inside the Battle for Cooper Union.
* Doing the Lord’s work at GOG.com.
* Every Single Movie That Jimmy Carter Watched at the White House.
* 30 Questions to Ask Your Kid Instead of “How Was Your Day?”
* These 25 schools are responsible for the greatest advances in science. Go Spartans! #11.
* If you like Return Of The Jedi but hate the Ewoks, you understand feminist criticism.
* Tased at the Harris Teeter. After an often torturous tenure at the helm of the Durham Police Department—including, most recently, last week’s controversial Tasering of an unarmed black man at a Durham Harris Teeter—Chief Jose Lopez Sr. is out.
* Fraternities are pretty bad.
* “I don’t expect them to understand everything I do,” Dr. Xi, 57, said in a telephone interview. “But the fact that they don’t consult with experts and then charge me? Put my family through all this? Damage my reputation? They shouldn’t do this. This is not a joke. This is not a game.”
* The NFL and the military: a love affair as strange and cynical as ever.
* God save Title IX from its champions.
* Memo to Clinton-world: It might be time to start panicking.
* Ahmed Mohamed and the “Freedom to Tinker.”
* How to screw up the Muppets in one easy step.
A spoiler-free example: The Miss Piggy-Kermit relationship has always worked because of how unfathomable it is, both in terms of species and temperament. These people don’t belong together, but somehow they’ve formed a decadeslong pairing, one that always felt buoyed by Miss Piggy’s stronger affections and a submissive aspect to Kermit. But discovering that Kermit is dating another pig now, perhaps a slightly more docile pig, inverts the whole dynamic of the relationship. Now Kermit just has a fetish, so has he always been playing hard-to-get with Piggy as part of some role-playing that we haven’t previously established? Once you open the window a crack, you’re gonna have to throw open the doors eventually. And within the same dynamic, Miss Piggy’s affections for Kermit, even affections tempered by occasional abuse, have always been a key softening factor for Miss Piggy. We tolerate her awfulness because of her love for Kermit and the love we believe Kermit has for her. Without that core, the risk of Miss Piggy spiraling into an untenable sty of callus words and consistent mistreatment of subordinates is all too real.
* What’s it like to take Jim Henson’s place?
* Don’t Have Sex With Robots, Say Ethicists.
* Nemo iudex in causa sua, but, you know, the opposite.
* Utilitarianism, y’all. Also: the Singularity.
* What Happens When A Parent’s Grief Goes Viral?
* At WeWork, an Idealistic Start-Up Clashes With Its Cleaners.
* Banksy and the Problem With Sarcastic Art.
* “The Long Emancipation” offers a useful reminder that abolition was not the charitable work of respectable white people, or not mainly that. Instead, the demise of slavery was made possible by the constant discomfort inflicted on middle-class white society by black activists.
* Students’ Requests for Trigger Warnings Grow More Varied. Higher Education’s Internet Outrage Machine. How Salaita Was Fired: One Year Later. Gaps in Earnings Stand Out in Release of College Data. Enrollment in Humanities Ph.D. Programs Declines as More Graduate Schools Slim Down. Colleges Flush With Cash Saddle Poorest Students With Debt. No Child Left Behind Goes to College. Is College Tuition Really Too High? The Uberification of the University. The Rise and Coming Demise of the Corporate University. Tacit knowledge and graduate education. Can’t afford to eat at a college sitting on over $9 billion? There’s an app for that. The Whistleblower Effect. The entire Japanese public university system attempts a massive queen sacrifice. There Is No Excuse for How Universities Treat Adjuncts. Are College Lectures Unfair? Microaggressions and good manners. The coming human capital contract nightmare.
* In 1997, the ETS announced that the SAT could not properly be labeled a scholastic assessment test, either; the initials now stand for nothing.
* Maybe the best description of what it is I think I’m doing I’ve ever seen: He said that his best professors “took texts that seemed complicated, made them look simple, and then made them complex again.”
* “We couldn’t imagine Oregonians’ turning their backs on higher education, but they did.”
* Some have called Harvard a Hedge Fund with a school attached, because it has over $36 billion in its endowment, but the UC holds over $100 billion in its retirement funds, endowments, and working capital funds. This large amount of money can be used for good, or it can be used for darker purposes, but one thing for sure, it makes the university an important global finance player. Of course, we should all ask what it means when a public university enters global finance.
* Jerry Brown’s University of California Perma-Temp Problem.
* Keywords for the Age of Austerity 22: Collaboration (part 2 of 2).
* The rise of the woman comic book buyer.
* Studies in Cruel Optimism, Bernie Sanders campaign edition.
* Yes. Yes. Embrace your hate.
* This week, the site enabled hosts of events to determine who has actually seen the Facebook invites they’ve sent out but not replied, making the simple act of viewing of your notifications a horrifying social contract you can’t escape.
* Nice work if you can get it: How I Felt After 70 Days of Lying in Bed for Science.
* If We Burn All the World’s Fossil Fuels, We’ll Melt Antarctica & Flood the Earth. Right, that’s the plan. Climate Apocalypse and/or Democracy. PS: Almost Half of the World’s Ocean Life Has Died Off Since 1970.
* Markets in everything! Refugees bring in big business in Europe.
* The arc of history is long, but.
* And some news you can use: The IRS Will Refuse Checks Greater Than $100 Million Beginning In 2016.
Written by gerrycanavan
September 17, 2015 at 6:47 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #quitlit, abolition, academia, academic fraud, adjunctification, adjuncts, ads, African literature, Ahmed Mohamed, America, apocalypse, Aramaic, art, Banksy, Bernie Sanders, books, brains, Caine Prize, canons, carbon, China, class struggle, clickbait, climate change, college sports, Columbia, confessions, Cooper Union, cruel optimism, cryonics, CWRU, D&D, decluttering, democracy, Democratic primary 2016, dislike button, ecology, endowments, espionage, Europe, Ewoks, Facebook, feminism, film, fossil fuels, Founding Fathers, free markets, free speech, freedom to tinker, fuck your shitty town, futurity, games, graduate student life, grief, Hillary Clinton, hoarding, How the University Works, How to Avoid Speaking, human capital contracts, IRS, Jaimee, Japan, Jim Henson, Jimmy Carter is smarter, Kermit, kids today, language, lectures, Lolita, marriage, mass incarceration, Matthew Yglesias, meritocracy, micro aggressions, military-industrial complex, Miss Piggy, Muppets, Museum of Science Fiction, Nabokov, NASA, NCAA, nemo iudex in causa sua, NFL, No Child Left Behind, NYPD, ocean acidification, oil, Oregon, over-educated literary theory PhDs, parenting, pedagogy, personal essays, poetry, police brutality, police state, police violence, politics, polls, presumption of innocence, prison-industrial complex, privilege, race, rape culture, refugees, Return of the Jedi, robots, Rutgers, SATs, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science, science fiction, sea level rise, sex, slavery, sleep, social networking, startups, staypieces, Steven Salaita, student debt, student evaluations, student movements, tasers, taxes, teaching, temp workers, the 1970s, the Constitution, the courts, the humanities, the Internet, the law, the Left, the Singularity, thinkpiece-industrial complex, Title IX, trigger warnings, tuition, Twilight of the Elites, Uber, University of California, utilitarianism, what it is I think I'm doing
Easter Links! Find Them All!
* The 2015 Hugo nominees have been announced, and they’re a mess. The Hugo Awards Were Always Political. But Now They’re Only Political. A Note About the Hugo Nominations This Year. The Puppy-Free Hugo Award Voter’s Guide. The Biggest Little SF Publisher you never heard of declares war. “Why I Declined a Hugo Award Nomination.”
* And in response to the question “Well, what should have been nominated for a Hugo?”: “Andromache and the Dragon,” by my brilliant Marquette colleague Brittany Pladek!
* “The Many Faces of Tatiana Maslany”: In portraying a horde of clones on ‘Orphan Black,’ the actress has created TV’s strangest — and most sophisticated — meditation on femininity. And a special bonus companion piece: Meet The Woman (Besides Tatiana Maslany) Who Plays Every Single “Orphan Black” Clone.
* Reddit’s Bizarre, Surreal, Maddening, Hypnotic, Divisive, and Possibly Evil April Fools’ Joke. I’ve become obsessed with this.
* CFP: Ephemeral Television. CFP: Into the Pensieve: The Harry Potter Generation in Retrospect.
* Watching them turn off the Rothkos.
* Somali Militants Kill 147 at Kenyan University.
* Iran’s Been Two Years Away From a Nuclear Weapon for Three Decades. The Iran deal. What if the Iranians are people too?
* So how much money is the NCAA making? In 2010, CBS and Turner Broadcasting gave the NCAA $10.8 billion for a fourteen-year broadcast monopoly on March Madness games. Estimated ad revenue for the 2013 tournament reached $1.15 billion, while ticket revenue brought in another $71.7 million. Last year no less than thirty-five coaches pulled down salaries higher than $1 million before bonuses; Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski topped the list with an income of more than $9.6 million.
* Guarding against the errant, suicidal murderous pilot belongs to a category called “wicked problems” — the complexity of the system and the conflicting incentives mean that every solution introduces another set of problems, so the only way forward is always going to be an imperfect one. Second, and perhaps more importantly, is that this once again reveals how, as humans, we are lousy at risk assessment, and also lousy of accepting this weakness. The problem is wicked, but its occurrence is so rare that it is almost unheard of — partly why it terrifies us so. Our imagination, biases and fears are terrible guides to what should actually be done to keep us safer, and this has significant consequences in a whole host of fields, ranging from terrorism to childcare to health-care.
* So you see, people like Tim Cook are selective in their moral universalism; morality, it turns out, is universal only insofar as extends to the particular desires of a Western bourgeoisie; deny a gay couple a wedding bouquet that they could get at the florist down the street anyway, and that is a cause for outrage and concern; extract minerals using indentured Congolese servants, well, look, we’ve got marginal cost to consider! The moral argument, it turns out, curdles when exposed to the profit motive, and the universality of justice actually does end at certain borders, one way or another.
* How the Slave Trade Built America.
* But unlike its predecessor, the show has no obvious narrative progression. Nacho’s important, or he’s not; the Kettlemans are half the show, or maybe we should care about Sandpiper. There are flashbacks to Jimmy’s past where Bob Odenkirk is playing either 25 or 57—a savvy criminal or a neophyte screw-up. In the lead-up to Better Call Saul, there were theories that the show would be funnier than Breaking Bad (maybe a sitcom?) or more procedural than Breaking Bad (maybe The Good Wife for bad boys?) or more episodic (like X-Files with lawyers!). None of that is true, and all of that is true. It’s interesting, but not the way great TV is interesting. Better Call Saul reminds me more of Treme or John From Cincinnati: post-masterpiece meanders.
* In TV’s Silver Age, a logjam of shows that are ‘pretty good,’ but not great.
* Here’s A Map That Shows All The Future Megacities From Science Fiction.
* Can science fiction be a form of social activism? Walidah Imarisha thinks so, and she’s recruited everyone from LeVar Burton to Mumia Abu-Jamal to help her prove it.
* Johns Hopkins Faces $1-Billion Lawsuit Over U.S. Experiments in Guatemala.
* sirens.io, blogging from seven years in the future.
* Are Aliens Behind Mysterious Radio Bursts? Scientists Weigh In.
* Calif. Governor Orders Mandatory Water Restrictions For 1st Time In History. It’s up to us to singlehandedly save california from drought by turning off the tap when we brush our teeth! California is pumping water that fell to Earth 20,000 years ago. California Drought Tests History of Endless Growth. R.I.P. California (1850-2016): What We’ll Lose And Learn From The World’s First Major Water Collapse. Children of the Drought.
* Starting this week, 25,000 households in Baltimore will suddenly lose their access to water for owing bills of $250 or more, with very little notice given and no public hearings.
* Oceans might take 1,000 years to recover from climate change, study suggests.
* Drug field tests used by cops are so bad they react positively to air, soap, candy.
* Trolley Problem: The Game. Advanced Trolley Problems.
* Scott Walker’s budget cuts $5.7 million from pollution control efforts.
* The Most Popular Antidepressants Are Based On A Theory We Know Is Wrong. Most antidepressant users have never had depression.
* 12 New Science Fiction Comics You Absolutely Need to be Reading.
* Hero Price Is Right model begins the revolution by just giving away a car.
* First as an unexpectedly great show, then as I don’t know it doesn’t sound like a very good idea to me.
* New report says manned Mars mission could reach orbit by 2033, land by 2039.
* Clarke makes her point not with stirring courtroom rhetoric or devastating legal arguments but by a process of relentless accretion, case by case, win by win. This is her cause. Because if the state cannot put these defendants to death, then how can it put anyone to death? Thirty-five executions took place in the United States in 2014 for crimes that form an inventory of human cruelty—and yet few were as willful and egregious as those committed by Judy Clarke’s clients.
* Here is an example of the priorities in New York state’s budget: There is no increase in the minimum wage, but purchasers of yachts that cost more than $230,000 are exempt from the sales tax.
* U.S. Court Officially Rules that Friendship Is Worthless.
* Tales from the Trenches: I was SWATed.
* Texas Just Does Not Care How Hot Its Prisons Get.
* Duke tries throwing polio at cancer, as you do.
* Interesting article on design: The Secret History of the Apple Watch.
* Senate Republicans say the current system is unfair because rural residents are effectively supporting urban counties’ schools and services when they shop there. Yes, that’s literally how the system is intended to function.
* The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust.
* So you want to resurrect a college.
* These Slow-Motion Videos of Fluids Vibrating on Speakers Are Wonderful.
* Now Full House, and the Muppets too.
* These Photos Of Melanie Griffith And Her Pet Lion In The 1970s Are Everything. (UPDATE: Here’s the article that seems to be the original source, plus a little bit on Roar’s rerelease. Noteworthy lines from Wikipedia: “Over 70 of the cast and crew were injured during the production of this film.”)
* Landlord Sends Man $1,200 Bill To Cleanup His Roommate’s Blood, Who Was Shot Dead By Police.
* Stan VHS, A Tumblr Blog Featuring 1980s-Style VHS Cover Art for Modern Television Shows and Movies.
* SF Short of the Weekend: “Burnt Grass.”
* …and your short short of the weekend: “No One Is Thirsty.”
* I finally found enough time to be annoyed by Obama interviewing David Simon about The Wire.
* And because you demanded it: An oral history of Max Headroom.
Written by gerrycanavan
April 5, 2015 at 9:29 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with airplanes, aliens, America, Andre the Giant, Apple, Apple Watch, art, austerity, Baltimore, Barack Obama, because rich people that's why, Better Call Saul, bias, big cats, Big Pharma, blogs, Boston, boycotts, brains, Breaking Bad, Brittany Pladek, California, cancer, capitalism, CFPs, charismatic megafauna, cities, class struggle, climate change, clones, Coach K, college, college basketball, college sports, comics, David Simon, death penalty, depression, design, Detroit, Diego Rivera, Diplomacy, dragons, drought, drugs, Duke, dystopia, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Easter, ecology, equality, ethics, fandom, fantasy, feminism, film, finance capital, frescoes, Frida Kahlo, friendship, Full House, futurity, Game of Thrones, gay rights, George R. R. Martin, Guatemala, happiness, Harry Potter, Harvard, HBO, horrors, How the University Works, Hugos, if you want a vision of the future, Indiana, indigenous futurism, indigenous peoples, informed consent, insider trading, Iran, Islamophobia, Johns Hopkins, Judy Clarke, justice, Kenya, kids, kids today, letters of recommendation, Levar Burton, liches, Lili Loofbourow, lions, mad science, maps, Marquette, Mars, Max Headroom, medical ethics, medicine, megacities, megadrought, Melanie Griffith, misogyny, moral panic, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Muppets, murder-suicide, NASA, NCAA, neoliberalism, New York, nostalgia, nuclear weapons, nuclearity, ocean acidification, oceans, Octavia Butler, Octavia's Brood, Orphan Black, outer space, parenting, Perry Bible Fellowship, photography, police brutality, police violence, polio, politics, pollution, prison-industrial complex, prisons, psychopharmacology, race, racism, rationality, reboots, Reddit, Republicans, risk assessment, Roar, Rothkos, Sad Puppies, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science fiction, science is magic, Scott Water, SETI, sexism, short film, Sistine Chapel, slavery, social justice, Somalia, sound, superheroes, SWAT teams, Sweet Briar, Tatiana Maslany, taxes, technosis externality clusterfuck, television, terrorism, Texas, the 1980s, the Anthropocene, The Button, the courts, the law, the long now, The Price Is Right, the revolution is here, the undead, The Wire, tigers, trolley problem, Tumblr, unnecessary sequels, very short film, VHS, Vince Gilligan, Vox Day, war on drugs, water, wicked problems, Wisconsin, yachts
Super Ultra Mega Monday Links
* That is what America does. It is not broken. That is exactly what is wrong with it. The American Justice System Is Not Broken.
* Why Should Anyone “Respect” the Law?
* Autopsy: Milwaukee cop shot mentally-ill black man from above and behind, 14 times. Wave of Protests After Grand Jury Doesn’t Indict Officer in Eric Garner Chokehold Case. But they did manage to indict the man who filmed the murder. Worse Than Eric Garner: Cops Who Got Away With Killing Autistic Men and Little Girls. Prosecutors throwing grand jury inquiries to save killer cops. NYPD Abuse Increases Settlements Costing City $735 Million. Rookie NYPD cop who shot unarmed black man texted union reps before radioing for help. The cop who murdered Tamir Rice should never have been a cop. Grand Jury Clears Two Former Jasper Cops Who Beat Woman in Jail. Seattle Cop Who Punched a Handcuffed Woman in the Face Won’t Be Charged. Coastal Carolina students detained after writing unapproved chalk messages about Ferguson on campus sidewalks. Cop Fired for Beating a Non-violent, Handcuffed Man On Video, Gets Job Back AND Back Pay. Inside the Twisted Police Department That Kills Unarmed Citizens at the Highest Rate in the Country. The Deadly Self-Pity of the Police. Police Reforms You Should Always Oppose. Being a cop showed me just how racist and violent the police are. Where Are All the Good Cops? Ferguson Police investigating whether Michael Brown’s stepfather intended to incite a riot. If It Happened There: Courts Sanction Killings by U.S. Security Forces. The real scandal of police violence is what’s legal.
* But body cameras that the cops can freely turn on and off and whose footage they completely control will definitely solve it. You don’t have to take my word for it.
* Hey! My tuition bought you that shotgun. More links under the photo.
* Stories of unseen lives and the effects homelessness in Milwaukee.
* Racial inequality is objectively worse than 30 years ago. And another deBoer instant classic: Tell Stephen Glass I said hey and shut out the lights on your way out.
* On Being a Black Male, Six Feet Four Inches Tall, in America in 2014. Chris Rock vs. the industry.
* Marquette University response to Westboro Baptist Church protest.
* Rolling Stone just wrecked an incredible year of progress for rape victims. What happened at Rolling Stone was not Jackie’s fault. Blame Rolling Stone. The lesson of Rolling Stone and UVA: protecting victims means checking their stories. Reporters are not your friends.
* And just when I was thinking The Newsroom had actually gotten pretty good: Emily Nussbaum on The Newsroom‘s Crazy-Making Campus-Rape Episode. The AC Club: D-.
* Something I’d somehow missed when it was new, but came across in research for a new piece on zombies I’m working on: Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman’s The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home.
* Science fiction after Ferguson: An interview with Walidah Imarisha.
* SF as R&D for the very powerful: U.S. spy agency predicts a very transhuman future by 2030.
* Imagining an open source Star Wars.
* On the lack of cultural estrangement in SF.
* Scenes from the class struggle at Oregon: Admin threatens to deport striking international grad students, just straight-up make-up grades. U Oregon and the Academic Labor System. Megapost at MetaFilter.
* The Democrats’ Education Plan: Class War. Resegregation.
* Cal Refuses to Pay Berkeley Minimum Wage.
* Colleges that pledged to help poor families have been doing the opposite, new figures show.
* An update on the Salaita case from Corey Robin.
* “If students have time to get drunk, colleges aren’t doing their job.” MetaFilter links to the full series at CHE.
* The Equipment 117 Colleges Have Acquired From the Dept. of Defense.
* What I’ve Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings.
* The latest New Inquiry on illness is another stellar issue from a publication that always delivers. This piece on love and schizophrenia is the one making the rounds currently.
* Kerry Puts Brakes on CIA Torture Report. John Kerry’s sad legacy.
* It Takes Nearly $100,000 a Year in Earnings Just to Buy a Crappy House in L.A.
* “Suicide Is My Retirement Plan.”
* Milwaukee after the recession: the jobs are going to the suburbs.
* Social justice as a means to social capital.
* 12 Female Characters Who Keep Shaving Despite Constant Peril.
* The music industry is a horror show, like everything else.
* Remembering Bhopal, the worst industrial disaster in the history of the world.
* We nearly saved the world, but we couldn’t give up our precious academic annual meetings.
* California drought the worst in 1,200 years, new study says. Won’t someone cancel the MLA before it kills again!
* First ever British sci-fi feature film released. Congratulations, England! Looking forward to your next one.
* 40 Years Ago, Earth Beamed Its First Postcard to the Stars.
* Court Hears Second Case for a Chimpanzee’s Legal Rights.
* Sony has apparently gone to war with North Korea. The future is weird, y’all.
* Someone Made A Map Of Every Rude Place Name In The UK.
* Shimer College: The Best Worst College in America.
* I mock the idea of “the law” around here a lot, but I never for the life of me imagined a scenario where the emergence of a video that shows a man accused of murdering his stepdaughter defiling her corpse could be bad news for the prosecution.
* Breaking news: the rich are different.
* So, for some reason, are the left-handed.
* But it’s not all bad news: The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like.
* The British Government Wants To Build A Tunnel Under Stonehenge.
* If I’m being perfectly honest I got bored watching the three-minute “What if The Hobbit was one movie?” trailer.
* Scholars, start your syllabi: New novel from Toni Morrison coming in April.
* Wes Anderson’s The Force Awakens. If only!
* And about 100 brains are missing from University of Texas. I’m late posting this, alas; all the easy jokes have already been taken…
Written by gerrycanavan
December 8, 2014 at 8:30 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with Aaron Sorkin, academia, academic labor, accreditation, activism, adjunctification, adjuncts, Albuquerque, alcohol, America, animal personhood, armpit hair, bad apples, Berkeley, Bhopal, binge drinking, body cameras, books, brains, California, campus police, chalk, Charles Stross, chimpanzees, Chris Rock, CIA, class struggle, Cleveland, Coastal Carolina University, coffee, college, Columbia, conferences, cultural capital, data, death penalty, Democrats, deportation, Detroit, divorce, drought, ecology, environmentalism, Episode 7, Eric Garner, even the liberal New Republic, Ferguson, film, fraternities, good cops, grading, graduate student life, Great Recession, Hell, homelessness, housing, How the University Works, if only, Jasper, John Kerry, justice, Lady Gaga, left-handedness, Lord of the Rings, Los Angeles, love, maps, Margaret Atwood, Marquette, mental illness, Michael Brown, military-industrial complex, Milwaukee, minimum wage, misogyny, MLA, music, New York, North Korea, novels, NYPD, Occupy Cal, Octavia's Brood, open source, outer space, Peter Jackson, police brutality, police state, police violence, politics, poverty, prison, prison-industrial complex, protest, race, racism, rape, rape culture, reformism, resistance, retirement, riots, Rolling Stone, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, schizophrenia, science fiction, Seattle, segregation, sexism, Shimer College, social justice, Sony, St. Louis, Star Wars, statistics, Steven Salaita, Stonehenge, strikes, student movements, suburbs, suicide, surveillance society, Tamir Rice, television, Texas, the courts, The Force Awakens, The Hobbit, the law, The New Inquiry, The Newsroom, the rich are different, the status is not quo, Tolkien, Toni Morrison, torture, transhumanism, unions, United Kingdom, University of Oregon, UVA, W. Kamau Bell, Walidah Imarisha, Wes Anderson, Westboro Baptist Church, zombies
Monday Links!
* From Sherryl Vint, in LARoB: “Men Behaving Badly: White Masculinity in Science Fiction Television.”
* The report reveals a sense of ideological, demographic and cultural siege, on the American right, from which there is no obvious escape. Unable to comprehend or process last year’s election defeat, they feel the nation has become unmoored from its founding principles and is on a full-scale, unrelenting descent into chaos.
* That’ll solve it! White House Orders “Tech Surge” to Fix Obamacare Website. Weeks to fix, just in time for the insurance to not take effect on January 1.
* Nothing beside remains: With U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, American military gear sold as scrap.
* George Washington University “admitted publicly for the first time Friday that it puts hundreds of undergraduate applicants on its waitlist each year because they cannot pay GW’s tuition.” Many Colleges Bend Rules To Admit Rich Applicants. Harvard’s Committee on University Resources.
* Science isn’t exactly an exact science.
With this in mind, consider 1,000 hypotheses being tested of which just 100 are true (see chart). Studies with a power of 0.8 will find 80 of them, missing 20 because of false negatives. Of the 900 hypotheses that are wrong, 5%—that is, 45 of them—will look right because of type I errors. Add the false positives to the 80 true positives and you have 125 positive results, fully a third of which are specious. If you dropped the statistical power from 0.8 to 0.4, which would seem realistic for many fields, you would still have 45 false positives but only 40 true positives. More than half your positive results would be wrong.
* Furthermore, even to its most practical and well-meaning critics, the actual relationship between gender and capitalist social relations remains an enigma. This is not simply because, as Marxists, we are reluctant to reproach the old man, but rather as a consequence of the fact that reproductive work – still performed primarily by those assigned the fate “woman” – is extremely difficult to comprehend in the terms provided by the critique of political economy. Of course, gender is fundamentally defined by capitalism, and it should not be concluded that Marx’s critique was “wrong”; buthe left women out of the story, and we need to find where he is hiding them. The Gendered Circuit: Reading The Arcane of Reproduction.
* The conspiracy goes deeper than you ever imagined: Author claims Robert Kennedy stole John F. Kennedy’s brain from National Archives.
* Meanwhile, another longstanding conspiracy theory gets validation: Fox really was using paid shills to manipulate comment threads.
* Seven Things You Might Not Know about Calvin & Hobbes.
* Traumatic Life Events, Not Genetics or Chemical Imbalance Cause Depression and Anxiety.
* To Fix Climate Change, Scientists Turn To Hacking The Earth.
* City College closed the Guillermo Morales-Assata Shakur Community and Student Center, an educational and organizing space founded on 1989 by leftist student groups, on Sunday morning without alerting the students and activists who work inside.
* Gasp! Jeb Bush ed reform group accused of abusing non-profit status to help corporations.
* American Horror Story and Abjection.
* Thus it has happened that, in the name of preventing invaders, the NSA has itself invaded.
* It begins: 870,000 Toyotas Recalled Due to “Spider-Related Problem.”
* And five points for Slytherin: Christie withdraws challenge to same-sex marriage ruling in New Jersey, which means it’s the law for good.
Written by gerrycanavan
October 21, 2013 at 12:41 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with abjection, academia, Afghanistan, American Horror Story, austerity, Barack Obama, brains, Calvin and Hobbes, cars, Chris Christie, class struggle, climate change, college, college admissions, conspiracy theories, CUNY, depression, development admits, Duke, ecology, five points for Slytherin, Fox News, games, gay rights, gender, geoengineering, George Washington University, guns, Harvard, health care, homelessness, horror, How the University Works, Jeb Bush, JFK, kids today, legacy admissions, marriage equality, masculinity, neoliberalism, New Jersey, New York, NSA, politics, race, reproduction, RFK, science, science fiction, spiders, student debt, student movements, Tea Party, Tic-Tac-Toe, tuition, war on education, war on terror, white privilege, Won't somebody think of the children?
8 of the 19 NFL Players She Has Autopsied; Three NHL Enforcers; and a Boy Just 17 Years Old
Written by gerrycanavan
August 17, 2012 at 7:13 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with brains, concussions, football, Green Bay Packers, neuropathology, sports
Thursday Night
* Alison Bechdel gets a Guggenheim (along with a bunch of other people).
* Duke students are in the news, and it isn’t even for something horrible.
* The Atlantic profiles Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid.
* The evidence is in. Humans have failed. It’s time to give forests back to the robots.
* Upcoming energy collapse got you down? The Army is ready.
* Wisconsin’s Marathon Campaign Season Takes Toll.
* Inside the mind of the octopus.
* We are all legal realists now.
* And Republicans and Democrats finally agree! Gallup: Mitt Romney least popular Republican nominee in modern history within own party.
Written by gerrycanavan
April 12, 2012 at 10:32 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with "Is Health Care Reform Constitutional?", 35mm, Alison Bechdel, America, Braid, brains, climate change, comics, digitality, Duke, ecology, elections, energy, feminism, film, forestry, games, genius, Guggenheim, health care, humans, Jonathan Blow, legal realism, military-industrial complex, Mitt Romney, octopuses, politics, polls, recalls, Republicans, robots, Supreme Court, Tumblr, Wisconsin
Monday! Yes!
* Science proves Republicans lie more. Really!
* Boy Without a Cerebellum Baffles Doctors.
* The Great Gatsby. For NES. The best part is: it’s playable.
* Obama to grad students: drop dead.
* Computers still stink at Jeopardy.
* Ghost planets of the solar system.
* And Jasper Johns awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom. He’s the first artist in 34 years to get one.
Written by gerrycanavan
February 15, 2011 at 12:03 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with Barack Obama, books, brains, computers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, games, graduate student life, Jasper Johns, lies and lying liars, medicine, neuroscience, Nintendo, planets, politics, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Republicans, science, solar system, student debt, The Great Gatsby
Sunday Night Lights
* The Wrong Side of the Heart: this weekend’s dose of vintage movie poster greatness.
* AskMetaFilter has all the huge-nerd podcasts I crave.
* Dr. Metzinger first proposes his thesis: there is no such thing as the self. The subjective sense of being a conscious person – the sense of being a self that is distinct from the body and present in a single, unified reality – is not a separate, coherent brain function but rather the result of many different systems running at the same time. I was telling you people this years ago!
* Four lesser-known members of the Fantastic Four. I’d never even heard of She-Thing.
* Pension war update: “…public employees and their dominance of blue states is going to be the biggest issue in this country for the next several years.”
* Marco Roth vs. the “neuronovel.”
The last dozen years or so have seen the emergence of a new strain within the Anglo-American novel. What has been variously referred to as the novel of consciousness or the psychological or confessional novel—the novel, at any rate, about the workings of a mind—has transformed itself into the neurological novel, wherein the mind becomes the brain. Since 1997, readers have encountered, in rough chronological order, Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love (de Clérambault’s syndrome, complete with an appended case history by a fictional “presiding psychiatrist” and a useful bibliography), Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn (Tourette’s syndrome), Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (autism), Richard Powers’s The Echomaker (facial agnosia, Capgras syndrome), McEwan again with Saturday (Huntington’s disease, as diagnosed by the neurosurgeon protagonist), Atmospheric Disturbances (Capgras syndrome again) by a medical school graduate, Rivka Galchen, and John Wray’s Lowboy (paranoid schizophrenia). And these are just a selection of recently published titles in “literary fiction.” There are also many recent genre novels, mostly thrillers, of amnesia, bipolar disorder, and multiple personality disorder. As young writers in Balzac walk around Paris pitching historical novels with titles like The Archer of Charles IX, in imitation of Walter Scott, today an aspiring novelist might seek his subject matter in a neglected corner or along some new frontier of neurology.
Via MeFi, which also links to the Jonah Lehrer’s response.
* And what Harlan Ellison makes, the world takes. Also via MeFi.
Written by gerrycanavan
January 2, 2011 at 10:51 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with brains, comics, Cormac McCarthy, Fantastic Four, good news for nerds, Harlan Ellison, movie posters, neuroscience, novels, pensions, plagiarism, podcasts, politics, science fiction, She-Thing, Terminator, the illusion of self, The Road, you don't exist