An Especially Worthy Entry in Our Ongoing Series of Wednesday Links

* ‘Well, Here’s What Won’t Pass,’ Obama Says Before Listing 35 Proposals.

* Aaron Bady’s amazing “African Writers in a New World” interview series at Post 45 continues with Teju Cole.

* Daniel Maguire on the McAdams Case at Marquette. Really hard to believe they’ve somehow managed to create a situation where McAdams has the better side of the argument.

* Ashon Crawley on Ferguson and utopia.

* Cruel optimism and the NFL (or, Life in the Factory of Sadness).

* Meanwhile: Patriots Black Ops Division Kills Opposing Team Leaders In Three States; “All in the Game,” Says Belichick.

* The NCAA, Last Seen Claiming It Has No Jurisdiction Over Decades-Long Academic Fraud at UNC, Says It’s Investigating Academic Fraud at 20 Colleges.

* …or live long enough to become the villain: The Vagina Monologues is now reactionary.

* Read the letter the FBI sent MLK to try to convince him to kill himself. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Stint as an Advice Columnist for Ebony Magazine. Happy Robert E. Lee Day! …anytime the same state and culture invites you to worship a human being they tried to kill, we should be suspicious of the ways they want us to remember.

* I think I rediscover this fact with the same surprise every couple of years: In 1991, a Boston University investigatory committee concluded that King had indeed plagiarized parts of his dissertation, but found that it was “impractical to reach, on the available evidence, any conclusions about Dr. King’s reasons for failing to attribute some, but not all, of his sources.” That is, it could have been anything from malicious intent to simple forgetfulness—no one can determine for sure today. They did not recommend a posthumous revocation of his degree, but instead suggested that a letter be attached to the dissertation in the university library noting the passages lacked quotations and citations.

* Neoliberalism and the Degradation of Education (Alternative Routes, Vol. 26). A ton of good links here.

* Teach or perish. Teach and perish.

* 80 rich people now have as much as 50% of the rest of humanity combined. Let’s meet our overlords!

* Science Fiction Under Totalitarian Regimes, Part 2: Tsarist and Soviet Russia. Here was Part 1: Germany.

* Coming soon: Keywords for Radicals.

* On the failure to reclaim the word “slut.”

* When the trains stopped coming down the track, Tryon, NC began to crumble, and since then something disappears each day.

* Groundbreaking Artwork Reimagines Disney Princesses As Office Supplies.

* ‘Cultural Marxism’: a uniting theory for rightwingers who love to play the victim. This is a term you see in the comment threads no one is supposed to be reading more and more.

* ‘Overworked’ drone pilots are baling out. Chomsky: Obama’s Drone Program ‘The Most Extreme Terrorist Campaign of Modern Times.’

* Lonesome Alito Declares Marriage Only Between A Man And The Sea.

* True crime watch: Milwaukee man says stabbing sister, father was ‘right thing to do.’ Spoiler alert: no.

* I want to believe! Russia Orders Obama: Tell World About Aliens, Or We Will.

* It’s already working! U.S. Air Force Releases Thousands of Pages Of Declassified UFO Files.

* 10 Rules For Making Better Fantasy Maps.

* Trustees Refuse to Reconsider Salaita’s Firing: “That Decision Is Final.”

* Scenes from the class struggle at the University of California.

* How Did We Get Here? The AAUP’s evolving emphasis on collective bargaining.

* The twilight of a particular organizational form should not be confused with the end of worker organization itself. Institutions are not permanent, but workers’ interest in organization is. And besides, the current model is disappearing whether we like it or not.

* Can you name these cities just by looking at their subway maps?

* Broken clock watch: Cuomo wants a train to La Guardia.

* Star Wars considering casting Tatiana Maslany for every role, one assumes.

* Pay Attention, 007! On the Usability of James Bond’s Gadgets.

* Majestic Animals That Could Go Extinct This Century.

* A lifetime of being paranoid about this confirmed.

* The trouble with Harley Quinn. Via io9.

* Sid Meier’s next: Starships.

* And doctors, who have already taken everything from us, want our pizza too. The line must be drawn here!

All the Links of the Week in One Convenient Location

* Ending the World the Human Way: Why can no one talk about climate change?

* You’ve seen it linked everywhere, but not here! Woody Allen’s Good Name. Don’t Listen to Woody Allen’s Biggest Defender. ​The Internet Digs Up Woody Allen’s Creepy Child-Loving Past. Woody Allen, My Pen Pal.

* Basically nobody wanted to live in a world where Bill Cosby was a sexual predator. It was too much to handle.

* Last days of a model.

* The Boston Globe: The Invisible Professor. Part-Time Professors Demand Higher Pay; Will Colleges Listen? 111 Colleges Are Accused of Violating Law by Requiring Student-Aid Forms.

* Another university makes the queen sacrifice.

* Privilege and the Ph.D. The Tenure Code. 1,600 letters of recommendation.

* Fifty-Five Bodies, and Zero Trials, at the Florida School for Boys.

* Even the liberal Kevin Drum thinks former senator, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has no accomplishments to run of president on, unlike (say) Obama when he ran for president, or George W. Bush, or Bill Clinton, or Mitt Romney, or….

* “The entire system is a joke. There is absolutely no living, breathing person with any kind of intellect who believes that a grand jury could consider and vote on 10 complex issues in the period of time that they use to deliberate on hundreds,” Joe Cheshire, a Raleigh attorney who handles criminal cases across North Carolina, told The Charlotte Observer.

* And all perfectly legal: Missouri Executes Man While His Appeal Was Still Pending Before Supreme Court.

* Cop Who Allegedly Said ‘We Don’t Have Time For This’ Before Shooting Schizophrenic Teen Dead Has Been Indicted.

* Who Killed the Jeff Davis 8?

* Broken clock watch: Antonin Scalia is… making sense?

* Wisconsin Teacher Fired for… Receiving Emails from His Sister.

* Cook, an Edinburg marksman, was target shooting toward the school from about a mile away when he struck the boys Dec. 12, 2011. The gunshots left Nicholas “Nicko” Tijerina, then 13, paralyzed and Edson Amaro, then 14, with serious internal organ damage.

* From the archives: In praise of Joanne Rowling’s Hermione Granger series. Harry Potter novels renamed.

* I think I’ve done this one before, too, but what the hell: Lynda Barry’s Course Syllabus.

* If It Happened There: The Super Bowl.

* Unloved Films, Part III: “The Hudsucker Proxy.”

* Daily Life in the Slave Quarters.

* A Local Teen’s Documentary on Slavery Premieres Friday in Detroit.

* How the Myth of the ‘Negro Cocaine Fiend’ Helped Shape American Drug Policy.

* Faculty set strike date at UIC.

* Closing SodaStream’s West Bank Factories Would Hurt Palestinians, but That’s Not the Point.

* ACLU lawsuit challenges Wisconsin same-sex marriage ban. Lawsuit claims Apple infringing on University of Wisconsin patent. Water Levels of the Great Lakes Are Declining.

* CVS Will Stop Selling Tobacco Products by October. I can’t believe it’s taken this long; it’s shocked me that pharmacies sold cigarettes ever since I worked in one way back in high school.

* Rest in peace, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

* Brooklyn chess star battles the pressure of expectations.

* A Mystery Illness Is Causing Starfish to Rip Themselves Into Pieces.

* What would happen if a cue ball struck a rack of 15 perfectly round, frictionless billiard balls, exactly head-on?

* Gasp! Marx Was Right!

* Gasp! Tar Sands Oil Development Is More Toxic Than Previously Thought, Study Finds.

* Gasp! Administrator Hiring Drove 28% Boom in Higher-Ed Work Force, Report Says.

* 12 Post-Potter Revelations J.K. Rowling Has Shared.

* On “Imported from Detroit.”

* The Fall of East Cleveland.

* California Considers Raising Its Minimum Wage To The Highest In The Country.

* CNN: The Worst.

* What They’re Saying About The Grand Budapest Hotel.

* Some great beach art.

* Now hanging on the wall of my office: The Life of Thought.

* It’s very important to McDonald’s that you know McNuggets are acceptably gross.

* Science Fiction as a Childhood Coping Mechanism.

* And the future truly is weird: Woman Gives Birth To Children, Discovers Her Twin Is Actually The Biological Mother, But She Is Technically Her Own Twin.